been noticing a leak from the tranny bellhousing but cant track it down, is there a kit for the home mechanic like the one ford tech's use with the dye and light.

jim

 

Pop out the dust cover on the bottom of the bell, it it's inside the bell housing it's either a pump seal leak, stripped pump bolt or converter lockup seal. If it's not, look for a loose/stripped pan bolt, loose line or venting fromt he top of the case. Also, I've seen recently a few '03s that have the 4R70W dipstick and this will read low until you overfill by 4 quarts, if your dipstick says MERCON V and it reads full, you have too much fluid in it.

G

 

ive spent some quality time with the plate off and a flashlight looking in there on my back , unfortunately, I purchased a used converter when my tranny went south and the stock converter was still making funny noises, and I think it is coming from the seam weld, the leak hasn’t got any better or worse, but if I put a mini mag flashlight right at the seam with the motor running I can see oil splatter on the lense, I just have to track down where it is on the seam and take it from there, turning the motor by hand hasn’t turned much up due to the fact that the oil is clean, and being flung out like that under pressure there isn’t any residual oil left by the hole, thanks for the reply, and it cant be the tube I have a 2000..


Jim

 

not to ask a stupid question, but is it transmission fluid or engine oil? just curious, if it's oil, it could be the passenger side head gasket or the rear main seal leaking.

look here: https://www.f150online.com/forums/sh...hreadid=102071



later,
chris

 

deff tranny fluid, i get about a dime size spot of red oil every other day on the garage floor, about every other washing i spray the in and outside of the bell housing with gunk and it takees about 3 days to build to the point of coming out the inspection hole again, also if i run my finger along the inside of the bellhousing inspection hole it comes out with red gunk...

jim

 

Converter weld I think, the splatter sounds like it. Although, if it leaked around the lockup seal on the stator, or the center pump seal it could run down the converter adn splatter that way.

Since it's' a relatively small leak, go to AutoZone and look for some additive tranny sealer, Valvoline makes a good one, it won't hurt it and it just might seal it. Otherwise you're gonna have to take the tranny out just to look at where it's coming from. Teh Valvoline stuff is pretty good and compatible with MERCON. There are a few otrher kinds on the market, but I have only used the Valvoline before, in an old A4LD that I rebuilt about 20K miles later, so I know it didn't hurt the box or soften the seals too much. ( A lot of tranny sealers are more or less brake fluid watered down in fluid, the cause the seals to swell which will stop some leaks, but it swells all of them, including the internal seals and that can cause some serious problems) DO NOT ADD MORE THAN ONE BOTTLE!!! Doing so could also cause internal seal failures.
I would even try just using half the bottle first and see if that helps before I tried the whole bottle.

Hope you get it figured out.

G