A Little background on my Truck in question.

2004 F250 SD V-10 AT 4x4 w/3.73 Rear. CrewCab. 58K Miles.

OK, so i reciently did a 1500 mi road trip with my truck. Towing a 5K # boat and the wife and two kids and maybe 400# of gear in the bed.

I went from Portland Oregon to Big bear California. Several mountian passes in between. Syskyou summit (4350') and Tejon Pass outside of LA, (4150') No issues. Truck pulled the passes without a sweat at 60Mph..

Fast forward to the climb up to Big Bear lake from the floor of the San Bernadino Mountians. 500' elevation to the top of hwy 18at at a whopping 7550' truck did NOT overheat. Trans guage was normal with no elevated reading. Water temp OK. Pulled the hill at 35-45MPH as it has LOTS of switchbacks.

Truck begins to smoke.

Pull over at the summit and examined the underside of the truck.
Trans fluid leaking from the bell housing at the inspection cover. poped the rubber plug out of the bottom of the bell housing and a little more fluid cam out.(everyone knows a little fluid makes large mess)

Fluid checked on a level surface and it was about 1" high on the stick above the safe zone.
Talked to a mechanic and he said it was over full and expanding out of the vent tube as it got hot.

Does this sound right?

BTW, the truck NEVER had another issue and made it home to portland, Oregon today FLAWLESSLY without issue.

NOW, the question(s)are these...

Is the factory dash trans temp guage to be trusted? Should i install a analog guage?

2nd- Does a deep aftermarket transmission pan really drop the trans fluid 20-30 degrees like they claim? Whos pan might you have experience with and recomend?

3rd- Is the V-10 factory trans cooler sufficient? If not, what MFG cooler might you recomend and why?

Many on the net say SYNTHETIC trans fluid can take A LOT more heat than standard ATF. Is it necessary? does it do what it says it does?


I know that this is a lot of questions, but this forum has be invalueable to me in the info i have recieved. Thanks for your .02$

Sean

 

i installed a aftermarket trans temp for my 4r100. i noticed that my new gauge takes about 10 min of driving to get to the normal temp range but it only takes about 4 minutes of driving for the stock dash gauge to get warmed up

 

I've done that climb to Big Bear, hats off to ya.

People much smarter than I will weigh in on this, but here's what I know.

Factory gauges stink, there's no substitute for remote gauges. I don't know about the deeper pans cooling that much, I know the theory is that it holds more fluid so there's more to spread the temp evenly across.

Yes, if you're "over" full it can definitely boil out. That's why you're supposed to check the fluid level warm as it expands when it heats up. If you're already "over" full, then when the heat's on it's going to do exactly what it did. I had a similar issue in my F150.

The V-10 factory cooler is supposedly pretty good. I have heard of people swapping our for a 31 pass PSD cooler as it fits in the same area, but they're kinda spendy.

Just my $.02

 

Did you check the level with the trans warmed up and idling in park? 1" above the safe zone is grossly overfilled.

Yes and no. It will stay right in the middle until the trans gets to 230°F. Your trans didn't get that hot, but I'll bet the torque converter got A LOT hotter than that in the conditions you were in. The cooler you have appears to have done it's job since the trans gauge didn't show hot.

A better cooler is a MUCH better investment than a deep pan. The deep pan will make it take longer to get hot, but it also will take longer to cool down once it gets hot. I wouldn't spend any of my money on a deep pan.

It appears that yours cooled the trans. The torque converter got very hot which softened the seal. That's where I believe you had a leak. If it leaked out of the vent the fluid wouldn't be inside the bellhousing.

Yes. that's true, but it wouldn't have prevented your leak.

 

the 1"above the top of the safe zone was after the climb to the top of the hill. It was level whe i checked it. that is obviously issue #1.

I intend to have the fluid flushed and the pan dropped and filter changed tomorrow....have i done dammage to it?

It NEVER did that again and towed flawlessly 700 miles back without issue.

any recomendations? this is the biggest load i every intend to tow and i DEFFINATELY will not be charging up 7500' Mountain passes anytime soon

 

You could flush the fluid, but you have no need to drop the pan and change the filter. You can wait until 300K+ to change that filter. It is just an extra expense that is not necessary.
Use Mercon V, which is synthetic.
Make sure it is filled to the correct level and not over. Even running up that mountain wouldn't make your fluid level increase. It sounds like it was grossly overfilled to begin with.
You could install an aftermarket gauge, many here do to better monitor the temp. That way you can observe normal temps to catch potential problems down the road if your temps vary, and you don't have to wait until 230F to be notified of a hot transmission.
Deep pans are unnecessary.

 

Were can i get mercon V or an equivelent in a gal or 5 gal container?

Also, im kinda a fan of overkill... is there a BIGGER or MORE EFFICIENT cooler than Stock? or is the factory one enough? what is your call on this?

 

I would say that your stock cooler is plenty. Ford engineers spent some time designing it. There are larger aftermarket coolers out there, but I have no experience with them.

Motorcraft Mercon V is only available in single quarts or in drums. If you go to O'Reilly they can order the Motorcraft Mercon V for less than what the dealer will charge for it. It was the lowest price on ANY Mercon V around here and I paid about $100 for the fluid out-the-door.

 

A 6.0l PSD trans cooler would help in the cooling department. (See link) I'd get an aftermarket trans temp gauge or the Scangauge II also because the stock gauges are about useless. The stock tuning on these trucks has a poor shift and TQ lockup strategy that also helps to heat up the trans due unnecessary locking and unlocking of the converter, lazy shifts and slow converter lockup. A custom tow tune would help in that area.

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/9...ns-cooler.html

 

DFK, funny you should mention the tune. I had a plan for one of the 5-Star tunes and the y-pipe in my "6 month Plan" for the truck. i have heard nothing but positives. If it will benefit the trans performance, it might be sooner than 6 months.

Question, how much "bigger" or "more efficient" is the PSD cooler??

Thanks for the help!

 

I have to respectfully disagree on the deep pan issue after installing a derale pan on my 07 after cracking the maghytek I noticed my loaded trans temps were down almost 20* across the board this includes towing capacity up 5mile 8% grades the maghytek showed no change in fluid temp, just a increase in capacity, on the odd chance that that you may think this is a fluke I have also installed their product on my '02 and see consistent results so their is something to the cooling surface area of the boiler style tubes running through the sump, FWIW
Jim...& fat Monty

 

You can see the difference between the 6.0l cooler and the 7.3l cooler in the link. Pretty sure the V10 cooler is larger than the early 7.3l coolers like in the pic but not near as large as the 6.0l cooler.
2002 Ford Super Duty F250 Transmission Cooler Photo 2

Another option is to add an additional universal cooler in addition to your stock cooler.

 

OK, so how many V-10 owners have updated their factory coolers to the 6.0L PSD cooler? how many degrees did your trans temp drop drop? Who is the cheapest place to get the 6.0L cooler?

Also, i have been looking on many forums since launching this post. The consensus is the same. Deep pans dont really EXTRACT any heat from the system...just delay the time it takes to get the fluid hot and thus, delays the time to cool it as well.

However, i have seen this Derale pan and it looks like the system might just do what it claims.

Anyone else use it ? how did it work?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Tranm...item4cf86e8542

 

I dropped my pan and filter a couple of weeks ago, what I can't figure out is I drained 9 qts out and put 6 back in and it shows full on my dipstick. I've checked it several times since then after driving around and still shows full, before I changed it always showed perfectly full too. Show why the extra 3 qts, I don't know everything shifts fine and I have no idiot lights on, but the old fluid looked clean on the dipstick until I drained it and then I could smell the burnt fluid smell.

 

It's only synthetic if you buy synthetic.

MERCON V is available as conventional, synthetic blend, and full synthetic. The factory uses a synthetic blend MERCON V, not a full synthetic.