Please help-never seen this before

[rjac]

This is the story. My 17 year old son was driving the '92 XLT ( auto 2 wheel drive)and had gone over to the girlfriends house about 5 miles away stayed about 2 hours then went to a friends house about half a mile from home. He stayed there about an hour and then went to come home and the transmission would not go into reverse but would go into drive. So he called me and asked if it was O.K. to drive it home I told him to check and make sure it had transmission fluid which it did but to take it easy until we could find out what was wrong. He called me in a panic when he got home. He said that it would not go over 5 miles an hour and smoke started to come out of the vents when he got home he raised the hood and it was smoking between the engine and the firewall. When I got home ( it was about 11:00 pm) I checked the oil and water and everything was O.K. but waited till the next morning to to look at it in the daylight. This is what I found the transmission would not move in any gear and the transmission has the proper fluid level but it is brown. All the hard plastic vac lines that run around the rear of the engine are melted in two places about inline with the valve covers and and had even melted down on the exhaust manifold under the vac block where they connect. The only lines that did not melt(burn)were the rubber lines to the transmission,power brakes and the speed control. There is soot on the edges of the hood at the firewall and along the fenders where smoke had escaped. It had no fluid leaks prior to this incident but now has seapage around the transmission pan gasket and around the front seal and visable leakage on the exhaust pipe. What the heck happenned obviously it was a fire but what caused it and where should I start on this problem. Any help would be appreciated. The truck has 120,000 miles and has been trouble free only things replaced battery, brakes,starter, alternator and radiator. No engine or drivetrain problems. If anyone has had similar experience I would welcome your comments. Thanks in advance

 

[Black Magic]

I haven't had any problems like that with my 91. Sorry to hear about you trouble, that sucks. I am sure someone here can help shine some light on it.

 

[mahieber]

You may find that the transmission cooler part of the radiator is totally clogged up, not letting fluid circulate.

That happened to mine, and when they took the transmission apart, most of the parts had turned blue from the heat.

I was driving it at the time and all of the transmission fluid blew out through some whatcha-ma-callit non the passenger side front, but the cause was the blocked radiator. They tried blowing 80 psi air through it and just a small amount of brown stuff came out, then nothing.

Had to have the radiator replaced and the tranny rebuilt including a new torque converter.

 

[MO_GUY]

whatever you do, go ahead and change that tranny fluid, ive never changed tranny fluid before but from what i know(isnt much) the fluid should be a red color