tranny fluid in the oil pan

[rick1578]

ok, so is it possible to get the tranny fluid in the oil pan w/o adding it directly. mine used way too much tranny fluid and when i drained the engine oil pan i found 18 qts. Have NEVER added any engine oil. any thoughts?

 

[yob_yeknom]

Okay, you've got me a little confused here.

You had 18 quarts of oil/tranny fluid in your engine? Are you sure? If there were 18 quarts in there, your engine would be destroyed. I'm not even sure if 18 quarts could fit in there at all. Maybe 18 pints?

Unless you somehow busted a seal in your tranny and also your rear main seal, both holes are large enough to easily let fluid drain through, and as you drained the oil the tranny fluid went into the engine and out with the oil. I cannot see that happening either though. If you had a problem that odd and that serious, your engine and tranny both would be really screwed up.

Other than that, I have no idea.

 

[TPLYNCH]

Do you have white smoke coming out of your exhaust??? There is a vacuum modulator valve on the tranny that goes bad and tranny fluid gets sucked into the engine, but it usually gets burned off (hence the white smoke exhaust).

 

[SteveVB]

did the truck run?

18 qts-I cant imagine 18 qts of anything in the oil pan - its not that big!
Like Tom said a leak from the modulator is usually noticed with the white smoke, and with 18 qts of anything in the pan the engine would have run poorly.

Only thing that I can think of that would add that much fluid to the pan would be coolant- from a head or cracked block.
Other than the vacuum from the modulator ther is no other way for trans fluid to even get into the engine- they share no other common fluid lines - the radiator and the trans do though - check the fluid for the rad see if its got trans fluid in it?

Good Luck

 

[rick1578]

guys,
thanks for the replies....here is what happened and what i've done/found... when we bought the epx (used) the previous owner said it used tranny fluid..no leaks, just used the fluid..after awhile we noticed a serious leak from what i thought was the rear seal.. i mean a leak so bad that you could watch the oil dripping when it was runinng.. so i removed the transfer case and the tranny.. took off the flywheel, discovered that it wasn't the seal,but the oil pan gasket.. had to pull the engine. drained the oil pan, in doing so, filled up a 10 qt drain pan, a 7.5 qt drain pan and STILL had oil in the pan when i pulled it..found NO gas or water or anti freeze in the pan....like i said, have never added oil except when changing the filter.. yes it smoked really bad, ran rough as crap.. did find fluid in the vacuum line from tranny to plenum.....I work p/t at auto zone an in talking ot those guys, everybody says it is the modualtor....gonna rebuild the v6 and the tanny.... was trying to fiure out whether i was on the right track as far as the mod goes so i guess i was?

 

[Robert]

Any chance the guy you bought it from was checking the fluid in a transmission that was low on fluid and inadvertantly added tranny fluid to the engine? That would explain why he thought he tranny was loosing fluid since he never added any to it. It would also explain the extremely high amount of tranny fluid in the engine. It is hard to imagine though that someone could put tranny fluid into the engine, thinking that it was going into the tranny. Maybe he didn't realize that the tranny fluid goes back into the dipstick hole.