dana 44 TTB drain-plug

shortly after i re-geared my truck, i realized i had no way of draining the gear oil out of the front axle without spending hours dismantling the front-end.  A quick search on the web returned a good idea:  installing a drain plug in the housing!  Somewhere i have a good link on this, so ill have to post it.  Most of my pics did not come out, so all i have are these two pics taken waayyy after it was done:


On the bottom of the housing is a flat spot.  This is protected by the lip that you see hanging down off of the 'cover'.  The flat spot is about an inch thick, so putting a small hole there wont hurt or weaken the axle.  Get a drill.  A good one.  Get a couple drill bits in varying size, and start drilling!  I had to use three drills to go through it, and it took probably close to a half hour to completely drill through it.  I used some oil to keep the drill cool, but once i started to break through, the gear oil did all the lubricating for me.
I installed a standard 1/4" brass pipe plug in the hole.  (note: the plug i used had tapered threads, so it will lock itself the further in you turn it.)  Again, the gear oil did all the lubricating that was needed while i was using the tap to cut the threads in the housing.
Its actually pretty simple to do.  It just takes alot of time to drill through the housing.  And be sure that when you do, you do not accidentally hit anything with the drill.

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