[MightyMo]

My Mo is at the dealer right now, they are looking into an "AT fluid leek" found by my local oil change monkey a few hundred miles ago. The dealer is saying I have a blown axle seal and that they are fixing it. I'd love to see the manual pages on that to see exactly what they are talking about, especially since I would think an axle seal would leak diff/transfer-case fluid not AT fluid.

 

[Kris]

Sorry, do have the manual. Unfortunately the photo editing software is on my home computer.

And I won't be home for at least 2 or more hours...........

 

[zebelkhan]

Is this what you are looking for?

 

[MightyMo]

I don't think so, that's the oil seal between the tranny and the transfercase. My service guy at the dealer distinctly said "Axle Seal" on the VM he left me, which I presume to mean one of the seals for the front half-shafts.

You are right though, that seal failing would blow the CVT fluid and not diff/transfer fluid.

I haven't been able to get ahold of him live yet to interrogate him further...

 

[zebelkhan]

No. This is the diagram for the axle seal. There are two of them on the the transfer case where the right and left axle stubs fit into. I do not know of any axle seals on the axles themselves. Just axle boots.

 

[MightyMo]

I'm sorry, you're right. I was reading that as the oil seal on the differential side of the CVT, not the side seals on the differential.

Interesting, so the front diff is part of the CVT fluid system, while the Transfer has it's own seperate pool of gear oil. That's kinda backwards from a normal auto-tranny in my expiriance, where the AT fluid is for the AT only and then the front diff & transfer use gear oil. I presume Nissan had a good reason to design it that way, probably due to how the CVT is engineered/packaged.

Thanks for the help!

 

[zebelkhan]

Not a problem....

 

[MightyMo]

Yup, just confirmed it's the side diff seal as was diagramed above. I'm not really sure why it would pop...I do drive agressively and in fairly extreme environments but still...

 

[zebelkhan]

I don't think that has anything to do with the way you drive. Either a bit of dirt got in there to cause it to wear out prematurly or just a defective seal that dried out before its time. Did you have have any work done on any part of the Murano that required pulling the axels brfore?

 

[Eric L.]

Actually, the front differential and rear transfer case use gear oil thats different from the NS-2 CVT fluid. In either case, glad to hear your dealer found the source of the leak!

 

[MightyMo]

Nope Eric, I dug into the service manual a bunch last night and it's clear that the front diff is integrated into the CVT and is part of the NS-2 fluid system. The transfer is a dinky little self contained thing that just turns the shaft 90 degrees and has it's own gear oil resevour.

Unfortunately this means that we will probably never get a front LSD for our Muranos, as it is in no way common with the Altima or any other Nissan beastie.

 

[senza]

Virtually all FWD vehicles have the transmission/differential combined in one unit generically referred to as a "transaxle assembly"...the AWD MO has a single speed transfer case coming off the "transaxle" that turns the driveshaft providing power to the rear differential...MightyMo is correct in that the transaxle(CVT/front diff) use the extremely pricey NS-2 fluid, while the transfer case and rear diff use gear oil...

 

[Eric L.]

Nope Eric, I dug into the service manual a bunch last night and it's clear that the front diff is integrated into the CVT and is part of the NS-2 fluid system. The transfer is a dinky little self contained thing that just turns the shaft 90 degrees and has it's own gear oil resevour.

Unfortunately this means that we will probably never get a front LSD for our Muranos, as it is in no way common with the Altima or any other Nissan beastie.

Yeah I bungled the terms transfer, differential, etc...

CVT/Front diff = NS-2
Front transfer = 80W90 GL-5
Rear diff = 80W90 GL-5