On my trans pan I have some deep scuffs/light scratches; would I be better to sand these Down and keep sanding OR should I not bother? I'm using an elastomeric reuseable gasket and worried about leaks

 

depends how deep they are,but to be safe I would sand them down as well as i could. In my opinion,dropping the tranny pan sucks,I would only want to do it once!!

 

Yeah. It looks like in the past someone had used a bench grinder to try to clean up the surface

 

Do your self a favor and get the FORD OEM gasket

 

The other option is to install a drain plug on the pan and RTV it in place. The filter in there is nothing more than a large screen - if it ever plugs up, your tranny is toast anyways. The main thing is keeping your fluid fresh. Let the flame wars begin!

p.s. I've done the above on multiple vehicles and have never had any problems. My curiosity got the best of me on one of my cars and I did remove the pan after 150K miles of trouble-free driving (with fluid drain & fills every 30K miles or so), and everything looked fine with just the normal clutch material deposits on the bottom of the pan. YMMV