Where did my gear oil go?

my lt85 gearbox got very noisy recently so I decided to drop the oil to see if any debris was present. So I opened the drain plug and only about a quarter litre of oil came out. I filled the box with about 3 litres of 20w/50 about 6000 miles ago and there were no external leaks visible.
Has it all leaked into the transfer box?

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to your question, I'm sure someone will be along soon who can advise you. Land Rovers do seem to have a habit of doing things like that, usually caused by leaks.What I have done as a bit of a safe guard is to add a tin of Molyslip to my gearbox, transfer box and diffs. I usually check them every six months or so when I grease the prop shafts.

Have you checked the tfer box oil level?

lynall said:

Have you checked the tfer box oil level?

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+1 - if there's a seal between the main box output and the transfer box it may be letting past, happens on my LT77/LT230 combo.

Not had a chance to check the transfer box level as I was too busy refilling the main box. Will open the level plug at the weekend and see what gushes out.

Or it disappears out of the gearbox input shaft seal when vehicle is moving

No visible oil leak on the gearbox or at the clutch cover though, the transfer case has started to weep at the inspection cover now. Will see what comes out of the transfer box on Saturday.

Someones going to get messy

You'll need towels - don't tell the missus

Make sure you have some spare gearbox oil available, if it has managed to transfer to the Tbox then it will have contaminated it so oil should be changed. That said if that is the issue and you don't fix it then it will keep re-occurring, have you checked the main gearbox breather is clear, can't really see it causing that much of a problem but it is a fairly simple and quick check.

Good tip, I'll check the breather too.