Today I went to change the transfer case fluid. The truck was on level ground. When I removed the fill plug to check the level before changing, oil came gushing out all over the floor. I didn't have the drain pan setup because the fluid is only supposed to be filled up to the bottom of the fill plug. This transfer case has never been serviced before. I got the truck new, and now it has 31k miles on it. It's a 2007 F150 4x4 5.4L XLT Super Crew.

The only thing that I can figure is that the factory overfilled the transfer case. The oil was not contaminated by water, and was actualy still clean and red. I'm in the process of changing all of my drive line fluids to Royal Purple. I refilled the case with 2 quarts (that's what the manual said it's capacity was)of Royal Purple ATF. Now I'm worried that I might not have put enough ATF in, or something might have been damaged from being overfilled.

Any thoughts...

 

That sounds like a bad seal between the case and the tranny - check your tranny fluid.

 

what would I check? I changed the tranny fluid last week. filled it to the normal range and it has not lost any fluid by the dip stick.

 

well, the thing is if the seal between the transmission and transfer case is bad, you are leaking fluid from the transmission into the transfer case.

obviously, if this is the case, you have to pull the transfer case off to fix the seal leak.

 

Is that something that would be covered under waranty or is that something I'll have to do my self? Or, is it something that I can just leave alone and it wouldn't hurt anything?

 

It has to be fixed if this is what's happening. Keep an eye on the level in both the case and tranny and see if either or both changes. I am almost certain that this would be covered by warranty.

 

it would be covered under standard warranty without obvious signs of impact, abuse or neglect etc

Over filling it can't really hurt it any. T-Case is like a standard transmission, just needs to splash the fluid around for cooling and lubrication. T-Cases and Manual transmissions aren't nearly as picky as Automatic Transmissions are.

 

I just bought a 2002 F150SupercabLariatFX4 with 69k miles and went through it servicing.
When I removed the fill plug in the transfer case, oil came out too.
I just drained it and refilled it to the plug level. I suspect Ford just overfilled it a bit. I don't think it is anything to worry about. I'm not worried about mine.

 

Resurrecting an old thread here because I had the same issue and just rebuilt the transmission (4R75W) on my truck. There is no seal on the back of the tranny that can be serviced by merely dropping the transfer case. There are two steel sealing rings that keep the pressurized fluid lubricating between the output shaft & the rear bushing from escaping in to the extension housing. These sealing rings can be replaced only after disassembling the entire transmission -- the output shaft/ring gear assembly is the last thing that comes out of the barrel of the transmission case.

I had an overfilled TC and suspect that this was either done at the factory or happened when the previous owner had the transmission flushed. My advice would be to monitor the tranny fluid levels and leave it alone. However, if your TC fluid is low and neither the front nor rear output seals are leaking, then you need to drop the TC and replace the input seal. But there's no way that a bad TC input seal would suck fluid from the transmission.

 

My first post on this thread was in 2009 and my TC was a little overfilled. Recently, I replaced the TC fluid again and it was a little overfilled again. So, it must be leaking a little fluid from the transmission to the TC. No more than it leaked in the first 69k miles and again in the last 64k miles is not enough for me to consider trying to repair it.