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Thanks again guys. Today we flushed the diff after one last test with the mechanic (my brother) behind the wheel. For him, the car is working very well, no shaking at all and the noise is very low and only when turning left, he’s not sure that it came from the diff, maybe shaft. He has experience with bad transmission but not on Subarus. Before flushing, we took temperature of the diff : 150 °F on each side (after about 12 aggressive miles) One shaft was hotter than the other and was missing grease, we’ll replace it (maybe it’s the noise). We also think that the dipstick o-ring is bad, may the reason why we have oil exiting from the top. The oil level was good, the oil is very nice (no metal or ATF). As you can see on pictures, residue on the plug is very limited. For my brother, it’s premature to replace the entire trans now, he would like to change seals and the retainer on the RH side, and put it back as it was at the beginning (loosen 3 notches). He think that what is leaking is aluminium that come from the retainer or the bloc, maybe dead retainer o-ring and vibrations ? Our problem is how to change the retainer without loosing the backlash setting, we will count the turns extra carefully, any other method ? Do you think it could be better doing the FSM AT-78 procedure ? Any advice ? Maybe, as you said, all this will end up changing the trans, but we will try not to. Lucky Texan, thank you for your advice about the torque converter, we know that’s an issue, my brother want to remove it with the trans, I hope we can avoid all this…

Thank you for your reply. I was afraid that someone with Subaru knowledge reply that. Replacing transmission is a lot of work, and we are not even sure that the other one is totally compatible (it's a 2001 and we saw some differences on VDC models between 2001 and 2002). Did anyone succesfully set the backlash, in place and without Subaru special tools or is it just impossible ? Do you think that it's possible to judge how bad is the diff now by looking thru the flush plug ? Thanks again we are feeling less lonely

As you can see in my intro, we are working on giving a new life to a long forgotten gen 2 H6. Here’s the problem with the front diff : We do not know the maintenance history of the drivetrain. Since the beginning, we notice some oily aluminum filings near the RH side of the front diff, the retainer seems a bit loose. Not knowing what we were doing, we took a bad decision : we tighten the retainer 3 notches. This appends 10K miles ago, during these 10K everything went perfectly right, only oddity, a little noise, when hot, accelerating in uphill curves. Noise is low and similar to shaft ones (clac clac) Last week, when we put it back on the pit for changing oil, we discovered, as you can see on the attached picture, that the leaking problem seems worst and that some oil exited thru the gauge. We now know that rotating the retainers sets the backlash and the preload/tooth contact. Do you think that we already ruined the front diff ? Is there a method to adjust the backlash without Subaru special tools ? Is following the procedure (FSM AT-78), changing seals, oil and even retainer if necessary could be enough ? We will flush the oil, and I’ll keep you posted Thank you for your time and precious opinions

My name is Alexis, I’m french. I just discovered this forum, it looks promising ! I own an Outback 2 H6 for 7 years now and I’m very happy, it’s an incredible car, especially on the snow. It’s an important part of our life because it allows us to life in a remote place in french Pyrénées, even with the progressive end of public snow-removal services. First, it was 2001 green and gold, but 3 years ago a tired french driver destroyed it, the car died but all the family didn’t even realise how violent was the impact. Facing how hard it was to find another H6 in France, we bought one (2002 full black) with a dead engine, and my brother swaps it with our, in the process we rebuild it entirely. It took about 2 years, but now the car is working quite well, we are still fixing a few issues, mainly due to the fact that the new car spent almost 10 years dying in a field, but no fear, it’s a Subaru !