Meh. My truck started showing symptoms 30,000 miles ago.

I'm on borrowed time, but I'm going to get as much as I can out of it.

You should probably go ahead and "power brake" it to burn them clutches in.

Automatic transmissions work off pressure. If the fluid is low enough your not going to have proper pressure to engage things internally, which means your slipping your clutch discs in the clutch pack. A transmission that's slipping the fluid will smell burned and start to become discolored from a bright red to a brownish red.

Your leak could be the front pump seal on the transmission. If it is you might get lucky with dumping in some Lucas Oil transmission fix to get that seal to swell back up. Another source of a leak is somebody over tightening the pan bolts smashing the gasket. Your only suppose to torque the pan bolts something like 10 inch pounds or something like that. If its the pan gasket that will be cured with a filter change.

Yes, this has been discussed ad nauseam by some, but long story short flushing will cause good debris to leave the transmission leading to slipping and other shifting issues.

Good post. However Lucas will not fix a front seal issue. We call Lucas liquid Gold at our shop and we have saved a lot of people money by using it. Lucas Stop Slip is a common remedy for internal seal issues. Very common in Jeeps to see a slipping symptom when the vehicle is cold, once the trans fluid heats up the seals expand due to the heat, Lucas helps revitalize those seals. Axle seals, front seals, pan gaskets, solenoid gaskets, pump seals, they will not be helped by adding Lucas. That being said, it wouldn't hurt anything putting it in there, but I just wanted to clear that up for someone who may get their hopes up.

***Also a note for any DIY'ers, if you are servicing the transmission on a vehicle do not use several types of pan gaskets ie a cork gasket and RTV, I have even seen people use a fiber pack gasket and a cork gasket with RTV in between them. On A604 transmissions we use Cork only. Some people will use RTV only, which is ok if done properly, but choose one or the other. Don't use fiber pack they are junk gaskets that seem to always leak IMO. We have a Wal-Mart down the road from us and they buy the filter kits from Advance Auto and it comes with a fiber pack, and I betcha we fix 2-3 of their services a week.

It's all ball bearings these days

Fetzer ball bearing? Man, you kids and your race cars.

"Good debris"? When you get the time I'd like to know what you mean by that.

Isn't it obvious? My transmission has gold in it! Pure Au. The good stuff. Now I just have to mine it. (or scoop through the leakage)

It's all so simple...

Yes, when businesses use aftermarket flushing machines like a T-Tech or a hot flush it actually cleans out the additives that are important in the transmission. Many times the flushing leaves solvents in the transmission also. I know Honda and Nissan do not want their transmissions flushed.


I will see if I can find an article on it that was released a while back.

I actually didn't answer the good debris part in my post. On older transmissions you will have debris in the transmission. All transmissions create debris, look on the magnet when you drop the pan or look on the drain plug. A lot of times debris will get into a clutch drum and embed into clutches, what this does is compensate for some wear on the clutches (very minimally I admit), when you flush it, I have seen clutches actually flake off when the debris is flushed out. Then after the flush is done, the vehicle has slipping symptoms.


******Let me preface this by saying, this is my opinion on flushes. We have a hot flush machine and a T-tech flush machine. I believe it does more negative than good. I actually found the article I was talking about, in this article Honda and Nissan per the manufacturer advise to not flush the transmission for possible cause of issues. GM actually warns against it also.

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/204...qv9u1zrujbsbst

I went through a week long Hyundai service advisor training in Chicago last year.

There was much debate about 'transmission flushes' like Wynns/BG etc.

The debate was pretty much service advisors in the session ALL selling flushes etc, and the fact that Hyundai does not want us too. The Hyundai service rep explained it like so - If there was any benefit from these flush and fill services with Wynns or BG or other additives, don't you think that that the R&D divisions at major car companies have checked into this? And if it REALLY helped wouldn't they recommend/sell such services as part of your scheduled maintenance?

Makes sense to me. Also, the gentleman is a training contractor of sorts that pretty much works for everyone, including GM, Ford, Nissan, and Honda, and every one of them does NOT want franchise dealerships to sell it, because of the stigma associated with it, and the fact it does **** all.

My late racing buddy, Rucker Massey was the owner of a top transmission shop, and built racing converters.
He taught me early on, just like you said, all you need is a good clean surface, a flat pan, and a cork gasket. Of course, you can't be an idiot and over tighten the pan bolts or you ruin the gasket.

Some of the older converters had a drain plug, so you could drain the fluid out of the converter when servicing the tranny. This is how they sell trans flushes now, as all of that old fluid is left in the converter by just changing the filter and fluid in the tranny.

I guess it makes sense that anytime you have metal parts that wear, you will have some debris, no matter how small. The question would just be if the material in yours is normal or abnormal.