Break-in maintenance, wait or do it now

You can stick a screwdriver into the hole to see if there is a gear that you might hit.

You can also cut the new bolt down, I would see if I could find a nut for it to put onto the bolt that you can take off so that you don't screw up the threads too bad.

A dealer may or may not charge you for a repair. There was someone on here a couple of years ago that stripped out a drain or fill bolt and took it to the dealer. The dealer took care of it without charging him. You just never know.

Just saw your reply, lol. I found a post where the same thing happened to a guy and he used a 10x1.25.14mm long bolt. The shortest I could find was a 10x1.25x20mm bolt. It threaded in there fine and I've got some diff fluid in there seeing if it's going to leak. I'll let it sit over night and check it out tomorrow. The dealers are closed on Monday so I'll give them a call Tuesday if the bolt didn't work or may do it to see what they say. Thanks for the help Jim!

I found the following for servicing the diffs.

thanks rancherMike, I didn't notice the kit for the diffs. i'll keep that in mind for the next time.

For the rear end lube make sure that it has a GL4 rating or above. Or you'll have problems with the wet brake

Yes sir Jim, I'm using the Yamalube Friction-Modified Shaft Drive Gear Oil 80W-90 Part# ACC-SHAFT-PL-32. So I changed the fluids and after breaking some of the threads in the front diff drain hole, I replaced that bolt with a gold plug magnetic drain bolt. I made sure there was no leaking and diff lock would engage properly and all seems fine. I was able to take the kodiak out on the trails and it performed great. I did engage diff lock again just to make sure things seemed good and I noticed that with it engaged I could still turn the handle bar pretty easily but I thought with diff lock engaged that it would be hard to turn them? I will say that even though it was easy to turn the handle bar it didn't seem like the wheels would turn as much to go along with how far i was turning the handle bar. does that sound normal?

It's normal, you should be able to tell the difference from when you are just in 4x4 vrs 4x4 with the diff lock on

Ok, once I get it out again I’ll give it another try to get a better idea of how it handles when I’m in each of those modes. Thanks Jim!