On Wednesday I performed my first LOF service on the Dakota. I don't drive the truck all that much - I'm 8 days away from one year of ownership and I've not quite driven 3,500 miles in that time. At this time I also changed the transmission oil as well as the front/rear differential oil. Everything went smoothly, and the only thing I found out of order was a chip in one of the teeth on the side gear of the rear diff:

I don't hear any noise coming from the rear end while driving and I have no way of knowing how long this has been present. I did find the missing chunk and some shavings on the magnet and I cleaned them out. Let me know what you guys think about running it like this.
While I had the differential covers and front skid plate off I also gave them a degrease and quick coat of black Rustoleum.
Since I had just performed a service, I figured it was about time I create an organized system for recording vehicle maintenance. I thought about using a physical note pad (similar to what Mike
@zmotorsports kindly shared with me in
this post last year) but being the digital nerd that I am I decided to use a spreadsheet on Google Sheets instead. That way I would be able to access the information at my computer or on my phone at anytime.
I thought I could just download an existing vehicle maintenance spreadsheet that someone else would have shared online, but a fairly lengthy search left me not satisfied with any of the available options, so I created my own. I'm not the best with spreadsheets, but using the tips that Mike shared in the post I linked above, I put together something that I think will work well for me.
Without a doubt I'll be fine tuning this as time goes on and I make more entries, but I felt like this was a good start. I know that I do want to add a section in the Maintenance Log for keeping track of costs. The Maintenance Schedule intervals aren't necessarily set in stone either, I came up with them by referencing my FSM as well as searching forums to see what others are doing. Please chime in if you have any suggestions, and let me know if you'd like me to share the spreadsheet file that you could alter for your needs.
Big thanks to Mike
@zmotorsports for sharing your system of tracking maintenance and for inspiring me to get organized in tracking mine!