Early yesterday morning I was driving my 96 5L with 4r70w auto on the interstate and the engine stalled. I pulled over to the side of the road, restarted the engine, and tried to pull away, and found my tranny was slipping- no matter what position I shifted it to, including park, it rolled as though it were in neutral.
The transmission fluid is good, and there isn't any leaking out of the case. the shifting linkage works fine as well. I have the truck up on jack stands now, and my dad and I are going to pull it today after breakfast. I was wondering if anyone here knew what might be wrong with it to cause it to slip like that?

 

well I've run into a road block- I've taken apart everything the hayes manual says needs to come off, I've taken all the engine block to bell housing bolts out, and it still seems held up on the drivers side. it separates easily on the passenger side though. Any ideas what could be holding it?

 

Why are you removing the transmission without troubleshooting all possible reasons for this behavior? There can be electronic reasons external to the transmission, and even internal reasons that only require a pan drop to fix. It's not like the old days, where if the tranny stops working, it's blown.

 

I had a similar thing happen on my ranger. The engine stall while I was going down the hwy. It was a 5 speed and I could put it in gear and it would just roll. I figured it was the trans. Towed the truck home and started looking and notice the drive shaft would spin with both back tire on the ground. It chucked the rearend not the trans. Make sure you check all things before pulling the transmission. Besides that I'm of no other help. Best of luck getting it back on the road.

 

any recommendations on what should be looked at that could cause these problems. The troubleshooting guides that we had said to check the fluid and the linkage, and if it isn't that, it is internal. if there is a better way, please tell.

 

the rear end seems to be good. I forgot to mention that there were grinding noises coming from the front of the trans for a few seconds when it was shifted to park or neutral with the engine running, and the tranny made a buzzing noise when sitting in park with the engine running, after the grinding noise stopped.

I should also mention that when we removed the torque converter access cover, we could see some pretty big scratches on the outside of the torque converter.

 

Okay, that indicates something in there came loose. Continue with the removal, the tranny or the engine does have to come out to work on the torque converter.

 

I got the tranny out and pulled the torque converter off. the scratches are very obviously there, but we can't figure out what would have made them. the converter doesn't seem damaged anywhere else. I suppose it is possible that they were there before the converter went in the tranny.

the more I mess with it, the more it seems partially linked to the transfer case. for one thing, the transfer case will shift to neutral when the engine is in park and reverse (it should only shift past 4 high when the tranny is in neutral, and I didn't try to shift in any other gears.) In addition, I can't shift the tranny to 4 low, no matter what gear I'm in. If it's the transfer case though, then the grinding noises when it shifts into park don't make sense.

 

when the transmission is out of the truck without fluid in it, are the planetary gears still engaged in such a way that if you spun the output shaft, then the input shaft would spin, provided that the transmission was in gear?

 

so when we dropped the pan and drained the converter, we got about 5 quarts of ATF. I looked up the capacity of the tranny and the stuff I've been finding says 12-14 quarts. We checked the fluid before we dropped the pan and it read good or possibly slightly high. Does the transmission retain a full 7-9 quarts of ATF that doesn't come out when you remove the pan and converter?

 

Planetary gears are all ALWAYS engaged. That having been said, unless the input shaft is turning at least 500 RPM the pump isn't making pressure, so all of the clutches and bands are released and the trans is in neutral, regardless of whether the trans is "in gear" or not.

There are about 5 quarts in the pan as you found. There are another 6-7 or so in the torque converter, and another 1-2 in other places.

If you only got 5 quarts out of the pan AND the torque converter, I think you found the problem. It was too low on fluid to operate.

 

my truck was 1/2 empty on tranny fluid one day and it sliped and i checked it right when it happend filled it up and it was happy. im going to do a complte fluid and filter chage thoe cuz theres 123K on the stock fluid and filter.

 

maybe the dipstick was wrong, because it read fine when I bought the truck in july, and it read the same five minutes after it quite on the side of the road. in that time I haven't had any problems with the tranny though, and I would figure that if it was somewhere in the range of 5-6 quarts low I would have noticed.

my main concern is when I try to refill it, I need to be able to get the level right.

It's possible that the problem is in the transfer case. I know that the rear end is good, and the engine is good.

when I had it on the ground I tried turning the yoke for the front drive shaft with the transfer case in 4high, and spinning the front yoke caused the rear to spin. Then I tried putting the transmission in park and moving the front yoke, and couldn't budge it. This is an improvement over before, when the truck rolled freely, even in park.

I'm still a bit worried about the very distinct grinding noise coming from right behind the converter, near the top of the transmission when I shifted it into drive or neutral with the engine running.

I'm also worried about the fact that it is possible to shift the transfer case into neutral or low range with the transmission in gear. the ability it's self isn't bad, in fact I kind of like it, but I know that it isn't suppose to happen, which means that something is broken that allows it to happen, and I wonder what it is, and what else that affects.

 

take it to a tranny shop and have them look at it