I didn’t see the damage, so I can’t comment for certain. But…I wouldn’t think that it’s out of the realm of possibility for that thing to grenade without any impact to it. I’ve seen stouter looking setups on lawn tractors. A bearing gets worn, an axle or pinion gear gets out of line (I’m assuming that’s what’s in there), and the stress from those parts binding at speed - I could see that aluminum housing splitting wide open pretty easily. That’s just me, though.
Could have failed, but it’s a 2018, which would require a pretty substantial defect. My money’s on hitting something.
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What I suspect happened is that the differential hit something and instead of then and there catastrophic failure a hairline fracture was caused. That would lead to gear oil loss a drop at a time. At some point whining followed by howling would follow but who pays attention to noises…
About 20 years ago a neighbor asked me about an oil leak on a manual trans Ford Probe. The drain plug had apparently struck something and that caused a 1/2" long crack on the drain plug boss of the trans case.
My suggestion in going cheap was to drain the gear oil, allow it to drip all day and night, and then after cleaning the crack a bit with brake cleaner to just patch it with RTV or JB Weld. Another option would be to hit the crack with a MIG or TIG welder. I told him that tiny leak could get away from him very easily.
Two months later he came to me and had to pay me to swap the transmission. He never attempted anything as a stop gap and at some the point the transmission decided to go to lunch and morph into scrap metal.
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Interesting you say it is impossible for the differential to just blow out without hitting something , well yesterday I had just pulled away from a traffic light I head a Boom I thought at first it was just the left rear tire as it went flat almost immediately. I pulled over I put the donut spare on then tried to drive the vehicles interesting enough the differential had blown which sent debri into the tire and popped it, so to say she had to hit something is complete bs , so please do not judge unless you know the whole story
Your money might be lost I did not hit anything yesterday and the 2018 Nissan rogue I was driving for my company the rear differential blew just taking off at a green light , however this particular rogue we have had major issues with it since day 1 cant find where the antifreeze is going but we have an idea it is going into the transmission , no leaks in core nor nothing on ground but yet it is drinking antifreeze every other day , but its definately possible to have a defective differential in the 2018 rogue and our companys Garage we use had proven it , it had what they say was a small crack that ended up over time expanding and finally it just went boom and popped the left rear tire in the process