Yesterday, I changed trans fluid.

I drained it without warping the pan. I put up the pan. Aftermarket filter came with rubber pan gasket. I put a small amount of grease on the gasket (as the filter kit box said) and then tightened the bolts fingertight, followed by careful hand torqueing to 8 ft lbs (100 inch pounds basically).

filled it with 4.5 qts of mobil one atf which was when it ran out the fluid check hole. put check bolt in, started, ran it through each gear, 3 seconds in each, shut off, added another half quart until it ran out the hole again, buttoned it up and went to sleep. Figure this is fine on the supposition that the torque converter probably didn't drain, bet it holds two quarts, 2+5=7, I must be ok.

This morning, no leaks under car.

Drove to work.

Arrive at work, notice small wisp of smoke from hood. Look under and huge puddle is forming from back of pan area.

Where is the vent hole? Could it have expanded and be running out the vent?


Help. I'm at work, 45 min from home, I can buy some tools to check the vent hole, but can't really do a whole new pan drain and fill in the work parking lot.

My plan so far is to wait til end of work, drive car to other end of parking lot, open check hole and see if it runs out or is up to the bottom edge of hole. If so, to drive it for a few minutes to get trans warmed up and then repeat.

Stop me from doing that if you have a reason why it's bad.

Thoughts?

Could you fill out your profile so we can see what your car is please? "Fuid Check hole"?? So there's no dipstick to check the trans fluid? Sounds like it's overfilled and blowing it out the overflow or vent.
Don

well its not the tranny on the 95-99 Z24's because that takes 7.4 quarts

either way just look at how fast its leaking from until you get home if its not extremely bad just buy a couple quarts and put them in and maybe one on the way if needed. until you can get it home to look at it more, either way jack it up crawl underthere and try to see where its from theres only so many places it can leak from , maybe you forgot a bolt or something

Right after i did my tranny like the day after, i was leaking red fluid it turned out to be power steering fluid and i was sure it was tranny fluid, just trace it man

The 4spd 4T40 has no dipstick. It has a fluid level check hole on the side of the trans near passenger half-shaft.

This is a 1997 sunfire convert, 2.2L.

Summary: in hand torqueing, one of the twelve bolts was overtorqued and caused a leak.

Took pan off, straightened it, put pan back up, refilled, think it will be ok.

ummmmmm 4t40e used 9.5 quarts


friends dont let friends roll stock

Ok, it's a 12-bolt pan. 4spd auto.

I believe that to be 4T40. Correct me if I'm mistaken.

Owners manual shows that it takes 7.4qts for a pan replace, 10 for full overhaul.

I'm willing to be corrected, I just want to get this right.

i went down that same road did the 7.5 then later found out when you leak out ur pan you loose it all


friends dont let friends roll stock

Really? Seems like it wouldn't drain the torque converter just from the pan leak- maybe driving on it might, but I guess centrifugal force would keep it in (hello high school physics!)

As it is, I'm going to check the level again tomorrow morning. There's a possibility that I have 11qts instead of 10 in there, so I'll check it warmed up after the drive to work.

Thanks for all your advice, and keep it coming.

I'm not normally an idiot, but I feel like one for having dorked this up.

Proof that I'm not useless at wrenching:
http://flickr.com/photos/vmarks - pics of the car that caused me to buy the pontiac: my VW.

It's a 1971 frame with 1968 body, and an engine I built in 96. Recently, it's become an annual ritual to take it out and rebuild it, and it's getting annoying to me and those who put up with me. So I picked up the sunfire convert, and am going to rebuild the vw one last time (this time it's either rod or main bearings, oh joy!) and sell it. I had always wanted to put an ecotec 2.2 in its back, but I'll never do it now.

there is a 4t40E and a 4t40 either way id assume they take close to the same amount of fluid


Fluid level requirements after service:

* Bottom pan removed………..7 liters (7.4 quarts)
* New converter………………2.5 liters (2.6 quarts)
* Complete rebuild……………10 liters (10.6 quarts)


Im sure you probably already know and if you didnt, when you go to check it tomorrow (or today 2AM) lol jack it up on all fours evenly then run it thru all the gears a couple times PD23R etc.. and then check the fluid

When i change the fluid in one of my cars a couple of years ago, i didn't think about the heat and the
fluid expansion. I changed the filter/fluid in my '94 Impala SS, 4L60E filled it went through the gears..
etc then when i actually ran it for more than 2-3 minutes it dumped out the overflow tube. What i didn't
remember from my physics is that fluid expands when it's hot. Thus you check that car hot, and in
park! duh!! I overfilled it by some amount, it dumped it out on me then i drained & re-filled the correct
way and no problems. The manual did say to "check when engine/transmission is at operating
temperature" but of course i didn't. Food for thought.
Don

Although it sounds like you found the leak and have corrected it...

A couple of things:

As stated above, the 4t40e takes 9 - 9.5 quarts after a pan drain and filter change.

I noticed you said:

Quote:

ran it through each gear, 3 seconds in each, shut off, added another half quart until it ran out the hole again, buttoned it up and went to sleep.

The engine needs to be running when you do the check.

Starting with a cold engine, start it and let it idle in park. After 2-3 minutes, remove the check bolt. Add fluid if necessary.
You must also act fast, otherwise the tranny will get too hot for an accurate reading from the check bolt.
Yes, this is contrary to most other automatics that need to be checked when hot. The 4t40e needs to be checked when warm.
If the engine runs for more than 8-10 minutes, shut it down and cool it down, then start over.

If you do a search in this forum, you'll find a (quite) long writeup I did many moons ago on this procedure.
It's been re-posted several times since, so should be easy to find.




-Ferrite

Odd how the owner's manual says 7.49 after pan...

More than that, it seems odd that the GM engineers couldn't simply figure out how much it takes when hot and tell us that instead of specifying -warm-. Or give us a dipstick.

Grumble.

I ended up having a local independent shop near work do the check, after I handed them the instructions on how to check it properly. Hopefully they followed them (it did say to run it for 2-3 minutes and then put it on the lift and check.)

Thank you for all your help, all of you.

Here's the problem with what the engineers wrote, and why sometimes engineers need to think like real people...

The 7.5 quarts that you see in service manuals and the owners manual is a (very) strict account of what the pan holds. When they published that number, the quart (approx.) that is in the filter was not accounted for. Neither was the residual drainage that occurs from having the pan off, and the fact that the hotter the tranny was when you started draining it, the more fluid will come out.

In my experience, most service manuals only account for pan drops, not a filter change. The engine oil change write-ups have gotten better over the years, but they used to omit the filter amount, also.

Rule of thumb is to always use capacity amounts as a guideline only. Using a dipstick (or check bolt, in this case) and treating every vehicle as unique is the only way to go. You'd be surprised how many people short themselves a quart (sometimes more, usually slightly less) of engine oil because they only add what "the book" says, and never check the dipstick. But that's a rant for another time.

Glad you got it resolved.




-Ferrite

When you do one of those 4T40E's (the 4spd trans in our Auto J-body), the car should be running when you check the level, do the initial fill, then run till its warm, then pull the check plug on the pass. side, not the one on the front of the trans (front being the front of the car), it should come out then.