PTU fluid change experience

[jason46]

I want to confirm this is the PTU breather plug, are there any other plugs that would look like this? I don't want to start pumping gear lube down the wrong tube.
The large tube to the right is an intake tube.

Thanks

 

[jason46]

Turns out that was the breather plug, I got lazy and went to an oil change place, 5 guys stared at it for 20 minutes and decided they wouldn't do it. Trying to jack up all 4 corners is a huge pain, I ended up just jacking the front up, the PTU drain plug is very close to the front and I just set it back down to drain. The body made some unerving creeks jacking on the pinch welds so I started jacking on the front suspension mounts. We extended the breather hose with a 2' 5/16 fuel line, ended up needing the wife to help feed it down from the top. The breather nipple is pretty difficult to find, if anyone else tries this, basically want to reach above the rear driveshaft about shoulder deep, all the posts I read before didn't mention that. I pulled the old hose off and feeling for the nipple made it a bit easier to distinguish between other hoses. We used a Mixmiser syringe to push the fluid in and this works really well, took maybe 15-20mins to push in 2oz at a time which I think is about the most you could force in before the internal air pressure becomes too much. All said and done I feel it was very worthwhile at 102,000 miles, being a northern truck I feel that helped extend its life but the fluid still looked like metallic soup but didn't smell burnt. The PTU must have been dragging a bit because the tranny feels a bit snappier and shifts quicker, we used Amsoil. Below is a photo of the 2' extended breather hose.

Metallic soup.