IRD gear oil change

I changed my IRD gear oil today, and found some metal particles on my sump plug,they were all very minute, but about the size of a pea when scrapped off and molded together, is this normal or do I have excessive wear going on in there???


The oil was golden to dirty brown in colour.

Am I right in saying that if its not silver I am ok?

Your going to get a few small particles of metal in the oil with the wear of bearings and gears. As long as the lumps are not to big. Im now rebuilding an IRD which had metal in the oil. All the gears are ok though and the bearings are fine too. Less can be said for the unit i am changing. Lumps of metal about 4mmx2mm. Best thing to do if your worried is remove the pinion from the front of the iRd unit and check the teeth on the gear. If it looks ok then you have nothing to worry about. If it has lumps missing from it then youve got problems.

I seen a gear through the filler hole and it looked ok, put my finger in there, to see if it had any razor sharpe edges and it did`nt. Thats all the testing I did.

Theres no problems with it, i was just changing the gear oil, and thought i`d ask.