My car had its 100K service last week at my local H A Fox dealers. No issues reported other than brake bad and disc wear.

A couple of days ago my wife called me to say there were some black spots of liquid on the garage floor; most likely oil, but I'm not sure.

When I checked the car I noticed that near the drivers rear wheel there is some kind of black lubricant leakin down. It doesn't appear to be from the suspension and the brake fluid was changed during the service, so I would expect that to be clear, not black. Also, it doesn't seem to be close enough to the wheels to be from the brakes.

I've attached a couple of photos in the hope that someone may be able to indicate what is leaking.

(Grrrr, I would include a photo if the software would let me. I'll try again later, but jaguarforums upload facility isn't playing ball and won't let me paste a url or a picture).

I would really like to determine if this is going to cause something to fail or if it is dangerous.

 

Could it be leaking from the diff?

 

Hi Ngarara,

I'm impressed!

Before I had chance to try loading photos again, I had a chat with a work colleague who looked at the photos and said exactly that.

Although the leak appears to be a little further under the car it may simply be running down the tops of various parts before finally dripping out.

I'm taking it to a local garage today to get confirmation.

I'm assuming that if too much oil leaks out of the diff it will start to "dry up" and then damage could be caused. Each morning, when I move the car there are usually a few drops of oil on the floor, so its not "flooding" out, but clearly there is a leak.

I do wonder if the damage may have been caused at the dealers when they jacked the car up as it's a coincidence that it has just started after it's service (they obviously didn't notice it during the service). It's not the first time I've had problems with the car after a service, but as usual the dealers are denying it has anything to do with them! It could just be a coincidence!

 

It's the only other source of fluid at the back of the car, other than the brakes (which you'd ruled out). I haven't seen a lot of complaints about the diff on here. But, yes, you don't want it to lose all of the fluid, that would be expensive!

 

How would the dealer damage the differential?

 

Possibly by sliding a jack under the car?

I wondered if it was possible that the seals may have been worn, but jacking the car up may have put different "strains" on the axle/differential resulting in the failure. Obviously not intentional. I guess it is unlikely, but it's rather annoying that having just paid for a 100K service I get the car back "broken".

The guy at my local garage confirmed it was the differential and suggested that the leak had been around for some time, so was confused as to why H A Fox Jaguar hadn't noticed it!

Another £300+ I have to throw at it, but I guess it is getting old at 8 years!

I was told that it will be necessary for a special device to be used to replace the bolts as they need to be at a certain tension (or something like that), which means he'll have to use the services of a third party. I assume this means he doesn't have the tool. This accounts for a third of the cost and he estimated the job at around 3 hours, which seems a lot!

 

There is a special jack used to support the diff, and some of the bolts need to be torqued to 133 Nm (98 lb.ft). Not sure why that's a big deal, though.