Mod 3: Differential Breather

When it comes to offroading, there isn’t much that is more fun than bombing through a mud hole and getting everything dirty. The problem is if you get stuck and your rear differential is sitting underwater, there is a chance that it could suck in some water and mix with your gear oil.

Gear oil + muddy water = no bueno.

This is one of those situations that I never want to have happen to me, so I proactively installed a diff breather using a kit from ARB. Their kit comes with some hose for the extension, fittings for the axle housing, and a small filtered housing that can actually accept multiple connections, such as a front diff breather, air locker breather, etc.

Installing this on Po was incredibly easy. Simply locate the small silver-ish breather on the rear axle and unscrew it. Screw one of the new ARB fittings in and you are good to go. Next, start running the tube. I recommend running the tube near the gas tank and along the driver side frame rail. It is a short run and has easy access to the engine bay, which is where I decided to keep my breather housing. One IMPORTANT note is to be mindful of where you are running the tube. If you run it too close to the exhaust, it will might right through and you will have essentially created a tube right in to your diff.

Once you get the tube in to the engine bay, attach it to the ARB breather housing and mount it. I didn’t want to drill in to the fresh body of this 4Runner, so I simply ziptied the housing to some wiring in the engine bay.

Finally, go back to the rear axle of the car and cut your tube to length. Make sure you leave a good sized loop of tube to allow for the axle to travel up and down!