RAM 2500 Diff Cover Upgrade – Banks Ram-Air Diff Review

00:02 what’s up everybody it’s been a long time since i posted a video here on my youtube channel it’s hot as crap out here texas weather gotta love it in the 90s so today we’re gonna do an upgrade to my truck i’ve been wanting to do some upgrades to this thing for quite some

00:17 time and now it is finally time to do it i’m super excited so today we’re going to be installing the banks diff rear diff cover if you know anything about this and you’re looking at videos about the bank’s rear diff i mean you’ve already done some research on it and it’s one of

00:34 the it’s the best in the on the market right now um we’ll see how it goes i won’t bore you too much with the details because there’s a lot of videos out there that go over this stuff but i haven’t seen one really with the 2021 yet i may have missed it but here it is so let’s get into the

00:50 unboxing of this see here so here’s the package let’s get this undone it’s pretty cool prepare to smile it’s pretty neat i like what they did there and then some trash here letter from banks himself just kind of going over everything with the uh diff cover and things of that nature and

01:17 kind of some research on it if you’ve watched banks’s video on all of the stuff that he’s done to make this product happen then you’re aware of a lot of the stuff that he’s went through and a lot of the research that he did and that’s part of the reason why i chose this diff cover man look at that

01:32 sure is pretty let’s see what’s in the package okay of course here is the def cover thing is this is awesome i went with the machine black instead of the all black or the natural i’m not really planning on powder coating anything i don’t have anything special done to my truck

01:54 just going to do this one thing to look nice pretty cool and of course everything that makes it work in here as you all they probably know all this stuff in here the radius of this the spacing between this and the pin and the ring gear is the same as the stock he added the

02:09 grooves in here to kind of make it to where it the fluid has a nice race to run up and go over the ring gear cooling fins through the scoops right here which are really neat they go all the way through too so the air the ram air grabs the air this way pushes it up over the fins and helps

02:31 cool the liquid the glue excuse me really nice so this over here for the moment it comes with some hardware looking really cool nice shiny bolts here is the gasket i believe this is for one of the some um not a hose but some uh there’s a cable and i’m not a cable i

02:58 it’s a hose or something underneath the truck and it’s this helps reclamp back on there some stickers from banks stick it on their vehicle and um advertise and uh looks like that’s about it that’s all that comes in the box i think we need to get this thing ready and rocking

03:15 so let’s just put it all out here on the table i’ll show you everything real quick so here’s the diff cover this is really neat i haven’t been wanting to look at this for a long time it has the viewing glass right here as you already know probably looking at his videos this is magnetic

03:39 really neat this is also if the fill port is angled out for easier fill you have the drain plug it’s located here which actually seems like this they redesigned this for the 2021s remember correctly the fill plug used to be i think a 3 8 drive on a socket now it’s an actual hex head

04:01 so that’s interesting looks like it’s in the lower still in the lower portion of the diff or close to it about you can’t really see that but it’s right there where you drain it out and uh beautiful machine work thing looks fantastic i’m excited to get it on here there’s

04:19 really no rough nothing sharp in here and at all and it looked really good going on the truck so here’s that here’s the diff cover as we discussed right here some stickers loctite and the bolts now my truck has this up again it’s hot as crap out here so excuse my

04:45 sweat my truck has the rear sway bar so i had to purchase the sway bar kit which is right here pretty simple nothing super super fancy in here so really small box so it comes with these items here and it feels like maybe they’re rubber i don’t know maybe they are metal yeah so it’s two metal spacers

05:10 you see here they go on between your sway bar and your axle kind of help push that sway bar out because it will interfere with the diff cover it comes with two of those one for each side then it comes with some new mounting hardware the bolts here because it’s a little bit longer than

05:28 the stock ones of course and here’s that so i’m going to get set up to get this on my truck i’ll see you in a second so one thing i didn’t cover in my and the other part was the amsoil gear lube so you don’t have to buy amsoil of course but i went ahead and bought it that’s what

05:47 banks recommends and they have a lot of research on theirs too why theirs is the best on the market but one that’s interest what’s interesting is banks for later year models they actually would provide there’s a link on when you purchase the diff cover on banks.com where you can add

06:05 four quarts of the amsoil gear lube but for the 2021s and newer they actually take 4.4 quarts so you have to buy fifty by five and i contacted banks asking them if i was missing something on their website to make sure i wasn’t overlooking the button to purchase the gear oil as well

06:24 and they’re really cool about it really good people they said no they don’t have it yet because they haven’t got it and it’s set up to buy five quarts so i had to go to amsoil.com it was easy went on there selected what i wanted i think totals like 120 bucks so not bad all right let’s get into this

06:40 diff cover all right guys so we’re under the truck here i’ve already taken the liberty i’ve taken off dropping the sway bar down taking off these two bolts here and these two bolts here in this location for you to see this it um well let’s see my wrench that’s the joy of working on a vehicle

07:04 right you always lose your freaking tools um anyway here’s my spacer ah here we go so those bolts are 15 millimeter at least that’s what’s fit fit on there popped off really easy the diff bolts they are a little bit more tricky than i thought they were going to be but

07:37 using my impact to take them off and using a half inch drive these up here in this area up here i have this bar here i don’t i don’t remember seeing that on some of the other vehicles but it is making it kind of difficult to get some of these but excuse me most of these are pretty simple um

08:03 just pop off see this is that that’s for the brake line i was wrong earlier i couldn’t remember the name of that what the little bracket was for that came in the bank’s kit goes here and that’s for this brake line bracket but other than that i won’t bore you guys too much i’m going to fast forward

08:18 through this you can see the whole process and then see how it goes finally gee whiz all right now get the rest of these bolts off this stuff stinks all right so most of them are loosened up i’m going to go up here and get the rest of these loosened up already got draining out so that’s good

10:09 the smell of this kind of reminds me of pipe dope not a very pleasant smell that’s for sure i’m going to cut it here get all this off and i’ll start back up again see a little bit there it is guys got it off i will say this thing’s a lot bigger when you’re looking at it in person i’ve seen plenty

10:57 of videos people changing these diff covers out and holy smokes this this is crazy how big this is if you’re never i’m not a mechanic so i just do stuff here and there at the house so this is pretty cool so now i’m gonna hit with some brake cleaner clean all the old lube out

11:15 and uh when i go up to the tailgate put on my lock tight on my new bolts and we’ll be back down here again and get this going so i’m gonna stop this clean this up back in a minute what’s up guys so i’m going to go ahead and get a lot cut on my bolts banks provide you with

11:34 a little packet of loptide here’s the gasket for the diff cover so i’m going to put all this on now show you how it goes it should be pretty stable so we’re going to get our bolts out three of them might be different size just because whenever you’re looking at it you have the two

11:53 that are holding the um brake line and excuse me the brake line bracket on there so it looks like they’re all the same size so we may have to have to reuse those which is okay i don’t mind that so all right let’s see yeah so these two i’m gonna try to do it without this i’m just gonna try to feed

12:32 this new bolt through the bracket instead of using these it doesn’t work we’ll see but just in case so yeah so here’s the old diff cover right pretty robust gasket compared to what’s coming off of there or what’s going to be going on this one um so you can kind of tell pretty neat

12:56 the radius here is identical to the radius in here like i said a lot of research that he did to do this took him a long time to come out with his diff cover but man i’m impressed i’m impressed with the top it’s top notch gail banks is that guy’s the man in my opinion he does uh

13:14 he’s phenomenal all the research he does in his stuff is great especially if you’re watching this video then you already kind of know so here’s that bracket i was talking about this is for the brake line so you have the brake line bracket itself it’s about about this big has all the brake lines

13:32 going to it and they feed out and you have one that kind of runs down and this is the new bracket for that i was fighting with it took me forever to get it off so i’m going to get some lubricant on this real quick just going to grab some old lube from my uh old diff cover go ahead and get this put on

13:51 see if it seems like it’s pre-formed at all it doesn’t really seem like it so we’ll just start feeding it in here as i mentioned super excited i’ve been wanting to do stuff too much truck for a long time i’ve never really had the opportunity to do it so this is a huge thing for me even though

14:20 maybe simple for some of you guys out there that are constantly doing stuff through your vehicles i always just i use the hell out of mine all the time and just never had a chance to uh to do a uh upgrade so super excited everything seems to be a little off here let’s

14:43 this seems a see too big if that’s the case it’s gonna be a major bummer well that’s not gonna work hmm that’s a problem maybe let’s see i wonder if i did something wrong let’s try this one more time yeah this gasket’s um this gasket’s too long that’s a that’s a problem that really sucks

16:11 i have to call banks because this is a this is this uh this is not good problem is i don’t we only have one vehicle at the moment helping out some family and letting them borrow our other car and i’ve already taken the old diff off all right christ is averted really simple actually

16:40 it’s kind of funny because out of all the videos i’ve watched nobody has mentioned this actually not once so i called banks they’re super helpful if you ever if you’re ordering parts from those guys and you need help with something and you’re having a problem with whatever it

16:53 is you purchased give them a call man they’ll walk you through it no problem and they know exactly what to do so if you have if you buy this cover you’re putting this gasket on okay here’s the trick see my problem was i was putting it on and i was pulling it out which was ultimately stretching out

17:11 the gasket future whenever you’re putting it on push inwards on it and it tightens it up pulls it nice and tight so it nice and lays out nice and flat so be back into the truck put this back on see a little bit all right guys back underneath the truck we got all of our bolts locked tightened

17:33 really simple you can see a little bit of lock tight on there it’ll focus a little bit so i got all 14 of them block tied it up i had gloves i don’t even know why i brought them out here i still use my hands silly but anyway so i just uh shot brake cleaner in here

17:51 and i’m just going to try to dry all all this other extra junk and get all that extra move out we should be all set up ready to go and um yeah other than that i mean that’s really about it put this thing together and see how she looks i’ll fast forward it for y’all all right

18:39 gotta change the pocket sizes so the bolts on the banks or 10 millimeter 10 millimeter socket boom work just fine let’s get this bracket back on here and drop you guys down so you can see so here’s that uh there is the bracket i was talking about actually let me go ahead this other side first

19:53 this thing is pretty sweet all right here’s where that little bracket they supply you with goes pull the old one off the new one on bolt goes through it boom done i’m not tightening these up as high as they can go because i’m going to go through and tighten them in a star pattern to make sure

20:26 everything’s torqued down nicely and i will torque them by hand i don’t want to use my impact for that but it sure does make it easy putting these bad boys on so all right now for the bracket looks like i’ll be able to use these guys through the bracket see how it goes

20:53 it’s gonna be nice and easy with it yep i think so let’s heat it through so one thing i did notice actually was that this bar i don’t think this is on some of the older models because they shave the back of the diff cover right here to clear this bar i was looking at it and i remember when

21:30 i got the diff i was checking it out i was just like i don’t remember this being flat like this in the pictures you see and on banks website remember this at all and uh well that’s why they did some changes on the 2021s lo and behold here is the byproduct of that

21:53 which is a big deal it went on just fine i was worried at first i thought maybe i was gonna have to just use my face pull that bar off because i mean that’s not gonna be really fun well luckily i didn’t have to so again banks is this guy and i admire the hell out of that guy because

22:22 he puts a lot of work into his stuff always enjoy watching his videos because he’s just got so much information so much data you know you guys that have the l5p chevys man you guys are going to be in for a heck of a treat whenever he gets done unless he is done and all his modifications on the engine

22:46 that he’s been working on blowing up so all right guys i’m not gonna boy with this i’m just gonna tighten all these bolts on everything should be good to go just wanna show you that bracket and this bracket over here on this side should be right about up right about there back in a minute

23:15 see you soon well here she is guys got it put on looking really good wiped all this stuff up here cleaned it up a little bit harder looks nice i got everything torqued up last touch our fill plug and that’s it and we should be all done really easy kind of a pain this bar

23:51 makes it kind of hard to fill up if you have a funnel uh you might be able to make it work if you go on this side of the diff back here you have a lot more room to fill up the disc cover the bummer is is that they slanted it this way you know to make it easier to get to but this bar

24:10 kind of makes it hard but that’s it guys all done looks good i have a lot more stuff coming i’m getting the banks boost tubes for the truck the monster ram air intake and the cold air intake so that should be here in the next couple weeks so stay tuned another video going

24:29 over some more this banks power performance super excited see you next time thanks for watching