Found in my transmission pan when I dropped it to replace the gasket. Anyone know what it is or where it came from? It's not broken....

 

It looks like part of the main control valve.
Open the link below and scroll to the bottom of the page, it's in roughly the center of the illustration.
There is no part number, just a % sign, because this part wasn't available separately. You could only get it as part of the control valve.

 

That looks like the right shape but the illustration shows it having a counter sunk hole -- mine does not have that. 371698-S also looks shorter than the bolt that I have.

Of course, the illustration could be wrong.

Is there any way to figure out how long 371698-S should be?

Did someone forget loc-tite when they rebuilt this?

I've never worked on a transmission before -- can I put this back in without having to pull the tranny?

 

Bolt-National Coarse Thread No. 10 -24 / Thread length: 5/8" / Below head to end: 3/4"

If you think Mike's (1973/79 Ford Light Truck Parts Catalog) illustration is wrong, here's 4 more to gaze at. Same two parts shown in all of them.

 

someone may have put the correct short bolt in a deeper hole...then they couldn't get the longer bolt to tighten up in the shallow hole??

 

Thanks, ND!

Found a good youtube video that shows the disassembly of a C6 and it looks like the valve body is easy to take out and I should be able to put that part back in. Does anyone show that it should be loc-tite'd in or have a torque spec for me?

 

Pulled the main control valve (easy) and put this part back in. What purpose it serves, I have NO idea. It doesn't touch or rest on any other piece. It doesn't help index the main control valve to put it back in. It doesn't seem to do ANYTHING but I trust that Ford engineers put it there for a reason so I felt better about putting it back.

Whole process was pretty simple. Was a little tricky getting the control valve to interact with the shift linkage correctly but (I think) I figured it out. Seems to shift fine.

Just need to replace the pan gasket and fill her up before I can try it out.