Metal Shavings in transmission pan

I have a 96 explorer 4.0 with the 4r55e Tranny. I bought it with 118000 miles and today i service the transmission (drop the pan) and i found the pan full of metal shavings around the magnets and in the pan. the tranny it doesn't seem to have been servised again. right now i'm at 140000 miles.

i add motocraft ATF because i didn't want to take any risk at this point switching to synthetic.

do i have to worry about it.it doesn't give me any troubles right now.

any advises are welcome.

Were there any shavings in the fluid when checking the dipstick? Mine had some right after the tranny blew.

The main advice I can give you is to not powerflush your transmission. Chances are that will increase the probability of your already shaky looking transmission dying. Somewhere on the board is a good thread about changing transmission fluid a quart or two at a time, and that is something you really should do before those shavings kill your tranny. Dropping the pan is only about 1/3 of the fluid.

Sorry if my comments are common knowledge to you already, I'm just trying to help you out whatever way I can. My rebuilt transmission ran me over $1500 bucks.

thanks a lot for your advise. NO SHAVINGS in dipstic just the bottom of the pan and the 2 magnets.

due to never change fluid for propably 140000 miles the fluid was red and that impress me a lot.

the metal shavings really scare me, but i didn't see any metal parts in the pan. my mechanic told me that is due to never service the tranny and the fluid was red so he told me to not worry about it.

Were the shavings very thick, or like a fine powder? Did the fluid have a sharp, burned smell similar to some P/S fluids? Did the fluid look like this:

the metal shavings were like a powder around the magnets and some on the bottom of the pan.

the color of the fluid where red exactly as the one i put in.(motorcraft ATF)
no burn smell on the fluid.

in the dipstick the level where about 1cm over the max, but we just put the fluid from the dipstick and we work the tranny in each gear without driving it yet.

i drove the car around the town and the tranny felt the same, normal/smooth shiftings and a small bang when go to reverse.

A lot of the time the metal shavings are from the rear thrust washer. I wouldn't stress about it, since they were not heavy fragments.

One of these days I am going to try and put a thread together describing metal in a transmission pan. When I hear shavings, I see individual shards of brightly colored metal, or dull bronze metal... there is a normal deposition of a fine dark powder that will stick to the magnet.... but it is not "shavings" in my mind. I would not stress if that is what you have.... but would avoid a power flush as was suggested....

Ditto... A fine gray dust I would consider normal. That's the metallic portion friction material that normall wears off the surfaces and is nothing wto worry about. It usually looks like a gray paste, and if you smoosh it between your fingers you can barely feel the particles.

When someone says 'metal shavings', like glacier mentioned, I start thinking of long curly hair-like pieces... and those are VERY bad.

-Joe

dont worry it just has some wear on the trans its common and put some lucas in it and let it go

just droped my pan and thought i had metel aswell thank **** for that
problem is mine was not red and did have wee bit of smell ,

also i droped pan to remove fillter but what i can gather is there is alot more to come .But when i ran my engine there was nothing coming out the cooler pipes is this because pan still of and i need to be adding oil ?????????? plz help

tranny mmmmmmmm

droped pan of tranny the day mmmmmm,

oil not the best colour and what i thought was metal is common in them thank **** ,

prob i have now is do i start engine with pan of to get rid of the rest of the oil and the 2 cooler pipes of aswell

or pan on and run and add

I would recommend that you not run the engine with the transmission pan off. The same applies to the oil pan, radiator, etc. There are some stickies at the top that are quite helpful. (pan on, add, run, stop, add, repeat)

checked my tranny fluid in my 02 explorer 4.6 l v8 u know the one u need to crawl under to check lol yay for me well it had some tiny metal shaveings in the fluid idk if this is common cus of the way u check it or what. dose anyonek now?thanks