Well I decided to change the fluids in the '03 S10 ZR2 I picked up last week. Front/rear diff, t-case, engine etc etc. On the way to my buddies house I decided to hit a dirt road and get the diffs nice and warm by using the 4wd Well, after about 5 mins I noticed quite a bit of smoke out the back. I switched off the 4wd and the smoke disappeared.. Neato.. Continued on to my buddies house, got under the truck and noticed all kinds of oil on the underside of the truck.
Checked the oil level in the engine and tranny and they were fine. (I should have checked the tranny level with the truck running, but didn't) There is a vent on the t-case which was spewing fluid all over the place. There is also a problem with a vacuum sensor on the t-case which I thought was the problem. After doing a bit of reading it wasn't, but I did however figure out what was the problem. A seal inbetween the tranny and tcase is shot, which is filling up the tcase with ATF and spewing out the vent hole. From what I've read this isn't an uncommon issue.. Kinda crappy after only picking up the truck last tuesday and maybe putting 400km's on it, but I guess that's how the dice roll. I'll give the place I bought it from a call Tuesday, but I don't expect much if anything at all. I've done a lot more complicated work on my Jetta, so a tcase doesn't sound to bad at all. Lets hope it all goes well!!!