Hello everyone!

[PSfan]

Hi, my name is Brendan, I'm a new explorer owner. I picked up a 1991 XLT and have had it for about a month. Paid $1300 for it, and only needed a windshield and brake drums for its saftey, though it is up to over 291,000kms on it (About 181,000 miles according to my cell phone.)

Since I had it I've changed the oil and filter, and put in an cd/mp3 deck (Would have been nice to know about this forum before changing the deck or I might have found out that I wouldn't need the $20 mounting kit.)

Anyway, I have a few question concerning some maintenance I intend on doing shortly, though I'm sure this isn't where I should be asking, so if someone could direct me where I should be posting, I'm sure it won't be long before I have more to ask

Transmission fluid: my fluid is brown, feels thin, and smells a little burnt. I was going to change it this weekend but a friend of mine suggests that once a transmission gets accustomed to worn out fluid, that new stuff may actually kill my transmission, any suggestions?

Also, my gas gauge doesn't work (from a quick snoop around I came to the conclusion that its a common occurance) anyway, when I bought the truck I was told that when the previous owner had his gas tank changed, the the ground strap wasn't replaced. But now that I have my 4x4 gas tank "protector" off, I can't see where the ground strap is suppose to go (And the plastic tank has me a little confused how it would work anyhow...) So any help here would be appreiciated, and maybe a few pictures for reference...

Thanks in advance for any help, and I hope that eventually I be able to answer some questions along with asking them...

Brendan

 

[ExplorerDMB]

Transmission fluid: my fluid is brown, feels thin, and smells a little burnt. I was going to change it this weekend but a friend of mine suggests that once a transmission gets accustomed to worn out fluid, that new stuff may actually kill my transmission, any suggestions?

Your friend is possibly right. I've heard of the same speculation. But, I think you should change the fluid. The transmissions in those 91-94 explorers kind of suck, so you got to hope for the best. How do you plan on changing it? Dropping the pan and changing the filter? That is actually probably not the best thing to do at this point due to the fact that when you put the new 5 qts. of new fluid into 15+ qts of nasty fluid, the new fluid will be diluted. So, either find a way to get atleast 75% of the fluid out or get the transmission flushed. Good luck. Hope I could of helped a little.

-Drew

 

[PSfan]

Hey Drew, Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. I have a few thoughts about this. Initially I had thought about trying to gradually introduce new fluid into the system to limit the change in the transmission, so only changing ¼ at a time maybe spread over a couple months was an option, except for the $20 per gasket + Filter. Also after talking with someone, one of the explanations I got to why changing the transmission fluid could be bad, was not so much the fluid, but possibly the filter. If the filter is plugged up, then a new clean filter may cause the transmission to be put under pressure that it is no longer accustomed to then… My current train of thought is to maybe just change the 5qts, and add some of that Lucas stop slip to see if it would help with the old stuff and hope for the best. But either way I can’t do the job this weekend so I will post this question in the Explorer repair section and see If there are more responses and maybe a few more options might present themselves.

Brendan