Bad fluid or something more serious

[napnetdot]

I woke up this morning and was leaving my house when I noticed that my automatic transmission got stuck in maybe 2nd gear while in drive. When I took my foot off the pedal I noticed it was in a higher gear than it should have been. I took it to Super-Lube and they did a full tranny fluid change (didn’t drop the pan). It seemed to fix the problem but is this something more serious? The fluid was close to the same color as coffee (yuck!) but I only had it changed maybe 4 months ago! I don’t do any major towing but I do drive rough (stupid city driving). Now what would cause the fluid to get this dirty this quick? The best tranny shop in Tallahassee rebuilt the thing about 6 months ago. It’s actually on its 3rd ‘rebuilt’ transmission (ugh). Thanks

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Joel McAllister
http://www.napnet.com/projects/truck/default.asp

92 XLT Ford Explorer 4 Door, V6 4.0 2WD Pushrod

 

[MyExp]

Do you have drain plug on your tranny pan? If not how did they change the fluid without dropping the pan?

I would say that coffee in the tranny is pretty bad. It should normally be a nice reddish color. Black is burnt tranny fluid. You may want to take the coffee from your tranny back to where you had it rebuilt and tell them that this is the fluid that was taken from your tranny. I do only mostly city driving and my fluid is in still good shape after about 20k miles. Other than that I don't know much about trannys...

Brian

 

[napnetdot]

Super-Lube has this neat toy which they hook up to your Tranny-Radiator (in and out) and then pour 5 gallongs of fluid into the machine. When you crank your engine, the fluid is automatically circulated and you get a full fluid change. They say it changes 99% of your fluid.

Ill call the guys who did my tranny and pray its under warentee.