This vehicle is my mother-in-laws ( 76 yrs old ) It was just recently shipped here via common carrier from Florida to San Diego. She has a '93 Ford Ranger with 91k miles on it. 4.0L V6 x OHV (MFI). This truck was recently taken to Drew Ford in La Mesa, CA for service. This past Monday, they performed a fuel line check, oil & filter change, smog, & a power flush of the transmission & fluid exchange. Power flush was recommended to her & she approved the service. Total bill of $ 627....

One day later on a drive to Julian, my mother-in -law had to pull over because of the loss of transmission fluid & transmission failure. Next day, the truck was towed back to Drew Ford for diagnostics. They ran their tests & determined that there was significant loss of transmission fluid due to a front pump seal failure in the transmission.. Now they want $ 2,100 for a new remanufactured tranny ( warranty 3 yrs & 100k miles ).

As the son-in-law, I am familiar with cars & trucks & work on my own vehicles. To me there is a cause & effect situation.

When I questioned the service advisor & service manager with regards to this failure, they said this failure could have happened at any time.. just a coincidence it failed one day after flush & fill of tranny.....

Bull****.....their service caused this failure.....power flushing the tranny subjects it to vacuum pressure to remove the old dirty fluid & replacing with new fluid.....

This truck ran perfectly fine with no leaks & drips from the engine or tranny area prior to this service being performed.....

What recourse do I have at this point.....besides small claims court.....

I know this service lead to this failure.....but they are not agreeing ? I will probably discuss this situation with the General Manager.....

Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff

 

well, situation is ruther typical. to proof is very difficult. unfortunatly tranny may be damaged becouse of ATF loss. but I can not be sure. So try to fill tranny with ATF and run around a bit. Of course tranny will leak, but you will understand is there reason to repare it. If everthing else is OK, drop a tranny, replace bad seal and run'n'joy againe.

 

I power flush transmissions all the time never had one blow out a front seal! May not be what you want to hear, but I would have to agree with the service manager at this point. And on a vehicle over 10 years old, a seal can go at any time. I have seals go bad on vehicles with way less miles and time on them. Sorry, but the power flush puts no pressure to the front seal of the pump

 

Well lets see, it's a 15 year old truck with ONLY 91K miles on it, with no problems, owned & driven by a female senior citizen, who agreed to have a Dealer recommended tranny flush done, then ONE day later has the tranny front pump seal fail !!!!

Depending on a number of other things, you may have an argument for a cause/effect relationship.

Did the Dealership have access to, or told of, the trucks past tranny service history, before the tranny service????

Had the tranny fluid & filter ever been changed????

If not, did they know this & first drop the pan to clean it & change the tranny filter, BEFORE the tranny service????

Did they do the solvent cleaning part of the service???? If so, with this mileage & if it's never had the pan dropped, or the fluid changed & them not dropping the pan to clean it & change the filter beforehand, it could be argued that any putrids in the pan would be stirred up & strained through the old filter, with a chance of clogging it up & putting a strain on the pump.

So maybe find out from the MIL what the tranny service history is & from the dealerships service manager & tech who did the flush, EXACTALLY what was done, with what in the way of cleaning solvents & were they Ford recommnded & with who's machine was the service done.

Ford uses a machine by Routunda, that uses the tranny pump to drive the exchange process, so it doesn't really "power flush" the tranny in such a way that it would subject the tranny to excess pressures.
So if the Dealership uses Fords machine & solvents, I don't think it's likely the root cause of the problem & it could be coincidence as they suggest, however if they are using another make of machine & not Ford recommended flush solvents, who knows!!!!!

If they chose to use the cleaning solvents before the fluid pump out/exchange & not drop the pan to clean it & change the filter beforehand, you may have an argument.

I suppose you could have them drop the pan & pull the filter in your presence, to see what the filters condition is, then decide where to go from there.

If it's clogged up, maybe you have an argument.

If it's not clogged up, then imo you don't have much argument about the service, unless you want to explore what kind of cleaning solvents were used & if they maybe had an effect on the pump seal.

Once you know exactally what & how it was done & with who's equiptment, the state of the tranny filter & the tranny service history, you should be able to decide if the Dealerships service had anything to do with the failure, or it was coincidence as the Dealer believes.

If you believe they have some liability, then go see the service manager & Dealership owner & see what they'll offer.

If the tranny isn't ruined, maybe do as Pablo suggested, have them replace the seal, put in a new filter & fluid & drive it & see what happens. Maybe all it needs is a new front seal. If you do that, also have them replace the rear seal, while they have the tranny out, afterall it's 15 years old too!!!!!

If the tranny is damaged & the filter was clogged, maybe you have an argument, or at least some argument & they'll slpit the charges on a replacement tranny.

$627, for what they did, engine oil & filter change, tranny pump out, fuel line check???? smog???? seems mighy high priced to me.

IMO for the price charged, they should have at least dropped the tranny pan, cleaned it & changed the tranny filter.
Around here, SW Va, thats about $150 & an oil change is $15-$20, for 5qts of oil & a filter!!!!!

A bunch of thoughts for pondering.
Let us know how it turns out.

 

Pawpaw.... all is done now. Lets think what and how can we do to save some $$$$.


Firs of all, I'd fill tranny with ATF to do road tests. If leaking tranny runs well (no internal damage), i'd drop a tranny, change seals, change filter and change vac. modulator (it is cheap). I suggest old lady pulled over before tranny was toasted inside.

Only having internal damage I'd think abut tranny rebuild ore change.

15 years old seal fault as result of power flush stress is normal, but belive me it could faile any time on road....

 

Ford dealer ran diagnostics....tranny is burned up....they put about 4 quarts in & got it to go into reverse but no forward gears at all......

This is their fault......flushing this tranny probably caused all the sediment, sludge, whatever to clog the filter putting excess pressure on the pump seal causing it to fail....Yes, my mother-in-law didnt sense a problem until it was too late....

The dealers always push recommended service & 76 yr old ladies are easy prey. She bit & this is the result.....if I have this car towed back to her house without replacing them replacing the tranny....I will drop the tranny pan myself & see if the filter is clogged....

If it is, I will show the dealer the results & agrue my point that it is service that should not have been recommended if they did not know the service history of this vehicle....

Again, this Ranger ran perfectly fine prior to this service........This is a screwup on their part......I will have my day in court with them.....

 

BTW, welcome to FTE.

Too bad the tranny seems to be toast.

I'd have them pull the tranny pan right there & watch them remove the filter & look at he debris in the tranny pan.

If you remove the vehicle from the shop first, who's to say where the filter or tanny pan debris came from????

Doesn't seem to me you need to go to court yet, especially if the filter is clogged up with sludge.

If it is, I'll bet managment will opt to share replacement costs, maybe do it at cost if your persistant!!!! Give upper managment a chance & be polite, but firm if you feel that evidence shows they seem to have some fault.

They may not be at fault, it may be coincidence, after all it is a 15 year old tranny & who knows at this point what the service history was.

If the filter isn't clogged with sludge, your gonna have a problem in court, with this thing having 15 years on it.

They'll also want to see the service records on it also. If she's never had it serviced in 91K miles, it's 60K over due, so she would be remiss in not having due scheduled maintenance done & all that aside you'd still have to prove the flush, or solvents used caused the problem.

Best to try & get the Dealer to cooperate in the fix & help in the cost to replace the tranny, which is going to have to be done by someone now that it's toast.

You could call around & see what some estimates would be from other tranny shops, then compair them to the Dealers initial estimate, or shared cost, if he'll do that.

More thoughts for pondering.

 

There is pressure limiter in tranny. When it is pluged exxesive fluid pressure pulls out seal and tranny looses fluid and.... failes. Anyway tranny was 15 years old and was ready to die any time.

Try to get discount. Say, yeah, tranny was old, but still running, I wanna get rebuilt ranny cheapper... give me 50% discount....

Ouh, now you undrestand why I do alll powertraine repare and maitanence myself....

 

I wonder if they put the right ammount of fluid back in after the flush procedure. Was it possibly overfilled? If they aren't at least offering to apply the initial $600 bill toward the replacement tranny I would take it elsewhere. Any good independent tranny repair shops with a good Better Business Bureau record in her area? If they had simply dropped pan replaced filter and then refilled I bet she wouldn't have had any problems. That power flush is overkill in my book.

 

I have said this before on this sight that if you have a vehicle with no maintenance done to the tranny,do a pan drop and change the filter and replace the fluid, doing a tranny flush could cause problems.

 

Sorry, if the seal failed because of crud clogging the filter then it is a owner fault for not doing regular maintenance on the vehicle and getting the transmission flushed and filter changed at the proper intervals. I work in the fast lube industry and we flush, flush & filter service between 3 to 10 cars and trucks a day with a vacuum powered machine. I have only seen 1 front seal issue where there was not a previous leak in the last 10 years. Sorry you have case of a faulty seal, most likely it dried up because it was not driven enough or because those early Ford auto trannies had issues from the factory.

 

May be Kona is right. I have seal relates problems about 10 years ago with my aero. after seal fault I got 2nd gear problems. had to take tranny apart to change band. Then reverce dissapeared. Had to drop tanny second time. When I got OD failures, my nervous system failed. I did tranny swap to 5 st tranny and this tranny runs, runs and runs.... It is a gaselle tranny, seems to me clone of Mercedes truk tranny. Tought like T5.

And what I tell you, when I realised that tranny lost ATF I added AFT every 2-3 miles. Anyway I got tranny toasted, seems to me if she pulled over and had to call tow truk nothing alive is in tranny now. A4LD is tranny that needs full reuild after major ATF loss ore overfilling. Made in UK, Germany and France cars with A4LD hade the same problems. Russian GAZ tried to use A4lD in 90-s for Volga cars and reported about atf level related problems. Finally they use now Ford 4231 DOHC with 5R44E ore 5R55e with bigger engines (both called A4LDE in EU) but they added tranny fluid sensor and ATF pressure sensor to prevent ATF level related problems.

Usually driver who feels that something is wrong with tranny stops a truck to check fluid level and prevent tranny damage but I think old lady tried to drive tuck with slipping tranny till full stop and toasted forward clutch...

 

Sorry to cramp your style, but they are right. The front seal most noticeably leaks when load occurs, and can fail at any time. The power flush should not have been performed, but would not have harmed the transmission either. The A4LD based transmissions can safely flush themselves without any special flush machine.

However, a flush should never be required, because even though a simple pan drop and filter change leaves a lot of old fluid in there, if it is done every 30,000 miles or so, the fluid will remain good enough to handle just about anything. The full flush is only needed if the tranny is neglected. It is a way to remove crud and to get all the old burnt fluid out.

I find your story interesting, but all to common. Truth is the transmission was taken in for service for a reason. The reason was most likely that shift problems were already being noticed. Even if the leak was not yet present or obvious, there were other issues likely at play. The new fluid has better viscosity characteristics, which can alter the pressures involved. If the old fluid was worn out, it may have reduced the line pressure. The new fluid is operating at a higher pressure, causing fluid to leak past the already worn seal.

If you have not had this transmission serviced every 30,000 miles from the time the vehicle was new, and the ability to prove it, then you really have no claim in court. However, you may be able to get the tranny rebuilt for less than the cost of swapping in an unknown rebuilt tranny. I strongly recommned rebuilding the old tranny. Off the shelf rebuilt trannys may have failed and been rebuilt multiple times, you don't know why they failed or what was replaced, and they are not reinforced to make them stronger or last longer.

Pablo, your problems seemed to have been worsened by internal valve body leaks. When the tranny overheats, it can damage the seals in the valve body. This causes issues with weak engagement on the bands and clutches, and also overdrive. Those parts will wear out and behave erratically. Rebuilding the valve body and installing a pressure boost valve would have resolved the issues

 

I did all radically. It was in 99. I sold a4ld to trannyshop for $200, got used 5st tranny for $60, then I got used clutch (flywheel, pressure plate and disk) for $50, drilled holes in a4ld bellhousing for 5st tranny, installed external slave cyl., got Lads clutch pedal and cylinder..... for higher speeds available now I change DS with gaselle one (2 pices with center bearing).... Well, I spent about $450, but this tranny still runs. Easy and cheap to repare. It was overheated w/o oil inside onse, but I got one more used tranny for $100 and rebuilt mine for $50 (for part only) replacing 5th gear and seals. So manual is the cheappest way..

 

Was there a transmission issue when the truck was taken in for service or was the flush recommended by the service advisor? If the later they were just trying to pad the bill. Especially since it was an older woman bringing it in.