Is that the aluminum housing on that model? at some point they went to cast, could have been mid stream with that model. Alumimum I would be gentle with it - and go until snug using lock tite and leave it. Still a solid housing and well made.... Good luck and take your time

I'll post to sent this item to the archives. As far as I'm concerned, the auto locking differential is great, at least when going forward. I need the reverse only when backing out of my parking place. I need the forward traction when coming up the hill on my driveway... and it works. The lock makes this pickup come up where I have seen front wheel sedans have trouble. This is especially true if I can find some strips of clear blacktop, one wheel in that track and I can't detect any slippage. I recommend the ALD if you don't need AWD or 4WD. And, the ALD doesn't add any significant weight or friction - thus there is no loss in gas mileage that comes with AWD/4WD. The option cost is very low, as I recall. It was the main reason I bought the Colorado over a Ranger, Ford didn't offer a locking (rear) differential of any kind.

Thanks, a very different response that I thought. I understand the pounds per square inch issue, and hadn't given that a thought. I guess I was let to bigger or wider tires from a like of the look they have on the fancy sport trucks. Still, my old Dodge had aggressive wide tire all around, and 4WD. That too led me to think on a 2WD, put the aggressive tread on the rear. I do have a sporty 70R15 tire on a small car and its wet pavement/snow performance is not as good as an all season. Still too, in the old days of big rear wheel drive cars, I've had a few myself, snow tires (I've had the studded tires too) were common practice. They may have been no wider, but they looked that way because of the aggressive tread. Looks like I should stay with what I've got. I'll spend the saved money putting on a class III trailer hitch/receiver. I understand installation of one made for the specific truck will require no drilling, just bolt to existing holes. I've already installed the light wiring, easy with the "T" wire adapter now on new trucks. I'd think the sooner the better on the installation. The truck has under 2,000 miles on it so the underside is still clean.

Every car needs attention, but rarely do two otherwise identical cars need the exact same services. Yet when at the dealer, quick lubes, and especially many of the chain stores you will see this "flush this and flush that" mentality. Business consultants have pushed for the last decade or so that as a business "You can't make money fixing cars", you need to sell services. Their programs allow for one or two top technicians inside the organization who actually can fix cars. Then a few techs who are on the road to becoming a journeymen technicians, and then essentially entry level people which are of course on the low end of the pay scale. If the shop gives an entry level person even average difficulty work, the chance of a mistake occurring where the car has to come back is quite high. So they have in effect created an entire list of services that can be sold and performed where little to no experience is required by the tech and therefore they have a very low chance of a mistake occurring. These flush services are more profitable per hour than the shop can charge for major repairs. Consider this the second part of Newtons law, " where for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". All of the price shopping for major repairs has stripped the profitability out of them, and at a dealer warranty work really tears the GP out of the equation. As a business they need a constant revenue stream to keep their doors open because true to the consultants description, they don't make money actually fixing broken cars so these services are sold and performed by an entry level group in order to subsidize the business when doing the more difficult, and especially warranty type repairs. Now do you need the differentials flushed, and the transmission serviced, injectors cleaned, etc? The fluid services are something I could only tell by looking at your owners manual, and by checking the conditions of the fluids myself. The problem here is even then the best that I can do is still subject to being a "subjective opinion". The injectors would only REQUIRE cleaning if your car was presenting a drive-ability symptom, otherwise, a bottle of cleaner once a year is just fine. A road test with the scan tool would show me if there was any chance of this being needed. The differentials are a simple drain and refill BTW, complete with easy to access drain and fill plugs (dipstick in some cases). Throttle body service? Easy to tell just by looking, as well as by watching the PCM control the idle speed with a scan tool. Many cars have a minimum idle speed, and the idle can be commanded with a scan tool to the lowest speed that the engine can reach. If the engine reaches the minimum idle speed without stalling, then the answer is "No", you don't require servicing. But consider this, the consultants have said its cheaper for the customer and the business to simply sell the service, than it is to employ and pay a technician who can and will perform the steps to test this and find out. You have seen price pressure from other posters here in this forum through the years that are the basis for the consultants advising the way they do. (Newtons Law again, that was the original action). Dollars and cents. The technician replacing a crankshaft in an engine is making the business around $100/hr gross profit while he costs the business $25-35 including benefits to be doing the repair. The flush routines can produce well over $250/hr gross profit for the business with close to minimum wage employees doing them. The crankshaft repair has a high risk of failure, the flushes extremely low risk. From that perspective, the consultants are correct. Anyone wonder why its difficult to find a real good technician/mechanic?