You read it right! A piece of string got wrapped around the half-shaft and shredded the O-ring that keeps the "wet" stuff inside the differential. This caused an oil leak that if gone unnoticed could have run it dry.

To get an idea how strange this is, you have to picture the half-shaft coming out of the diff, there are u-joints on each side covered but a CV boot. One side has splines to go into the wheel hub, and the other has splines to go into the diff housing. There is a small steel "flange" attached to the half-shaft that protects the 0-ring from damage. This "flange" rotates with the half-shaft and the tolerances between it and the diff housing are a millimeter or two at the most. Somehow I was unlucky enough to have a piece of string get right into that space. Once there, it made short work of the rubber seal.

Oh well, my car has been down for eleven days for this problem, and I've been very grouchy. My wife is cracking up because she thinks its pretty funny to see a grown man pout for a week!

 

How unfortunate! I hope that your car is returned to the street soon.

Fishing line is the bane of outboards for the same reason, and all that I know of have special inserts of glorified washers designed to keep line away from the prop shaft bearing.

 

That is a major problem for boat owners that pick up fishing line. It just tightens up and takes out the seal. I don't think most of us have to worry about this one but good to know info.. Thanks

 

Thanks, I got the car back last night. The actual repair took about 6 hours, we had to wait for parts over two weekends which extended the down time to 11 days.

I was going stir crazy in an automatic transmission Civic LX and I would have been pissed if the car was down for this weekend because there's an autocross!