I changed my diff fluid at 3,200mi and was a bit surprised at the condition of the fluid that came out of the diff with only 3,200 miles. The fluid was black, smelly and worst of all the magnetic drain plug at a fairly large lump of metal filings on it.
I drained it and replaced it with LE 607 gear oil with Almasol. Hopefully it will protect better and last longer.

My message is that owners may want to change out their diff oil sooner than they think. I'll be curious to see what it looks like for the next change. Perhaps I was just witnessing the filings from manufacturing and break-in.

Andy

 

Im not too sure what a Diff Fluid is. Can someone teach me some pointers? Also, how do you change it out for the Le stuff?

 

eh I don't drive her hard and never launch her, so not to worried about mine. Its a must to change it freequent if you launch your car I'm assuming.

 

No actually it's a must if you just plain drive your car. According to the owner's manual you should change it every 15k miles if you classify yourself under the "severe" schedule(which IMO 95% of S2000 owners should) and 30k miles if you are on the "normal" schedule.

As UCrazyKid has already pointed out, for new buyers this should probably be done far sooner to get the OEM fluid out of the diff. If I ever decide to sell my 9k rpm'er and move on to an 06 or 07 model(assuming they exist) the diff fluid will be something I change out within the first 500-1000 miles. Now that I have hindsight in the matter I will not wait until the first oil change(3,750) like I did with my 03.

 

Diff fluid is the fluid in the differential, the set of gears that transfer power from the driveshaft to the drive axles and ultimately the wheels. Sometimes called a pumpkin. Xviper has written up an excellent procedure for changing the fluid seen here...

diff

Here is some other useful info...

other stuff

 

It has nothing to do with how hard you drive. My car is barely broken in and babied and yet the fluid looked bad.

I imagine after this first change, the car will be fine changing every 15K after this.

AA

 

yeh mine is at 34k or so and I think changed last at 15k or whatever the last service was, but I won't take her in for awhile maybe several more ks not to worried drives perfectly fine. The engine oil on the other hand is something I change and check up on all the time.

 

The breaking in process of a LSD or even the stock one uses A LOT of oil. It basically turns the oil from yellowish to black within a few hundred miles.
When I switched mine to the Spoon one, 1000 km's later, the thing was black, and i mean BLACK.

 

just changed mine at the 30k mark and the old fluid didnt look too bad. smelled bad but i figured that.

and the DIY by vapor was a piece of cake!

 

It looks bad but it's not bad. It a high Moly lube. You have removed the high Moly lube and replaced it with a lesser oil. What is Moly?

"Moly" is molybdenum disulfide, a chemical compound with the symbol MoS2. Moly is the term commonly used in the lubricants industry.
Moly was first used as a lubricant as early as the 17th century, but its merits were not fully appreciated until aerospace researchers, during the 1940's and 1950's, discovered its unique ability to function in the extreme environment of deep space.
Since that time, moly lubricants (greases, fluids, and dry films) have proven themselves in a wide variety of military, industrial, off-highway (construction and mining), and automotive applications.

The lubricating properties of moly come from its structure of stacked plates. Each moly particle, on a microscopic scale, can be visualized in simple terms as a series of buttered bread slices one on another. The bread represents layers of molybdenum atoms and butter represents layers of sulfur atoms. The bread and butter units align themselves parallel to the metal surfaces in contact and adhere by mechanical and physical forces to the peaks and valleys of the metal surfaces. Because the butter layers are weak, the layers of the bread and butter easily slide sideways on each other while still adhering to the opposed metal surfaces. Metal-to-metal contact is minimized because the moly fills in the peaks and valleys, and it creates a protective film over the metal surface. Exceptionally smooth contact surfaces are established as the moly film develops, thus reducing friction, wear, and its attendant rise in temperature. The moly film is not permanent, but it can be replenished from the moly contained in the bulk lubricant.