I will be taking it in to the dealership later today, but a weird thing happened on my trip last Friday. It was a long trip of about 900 miles and about 1/2 way through I started smelling burning ATF. The truck only has about 29,000 miles on it so I thought it was the truck ahead of me and it went away for a bit and then came back strong every time I stopped the truck. As it was later in the evening, I pulled in to an Independent Oil Change place, yes I know, but these people seemed to know stuff and I was out in the wilds. They crawled all over the truck and found it was blowing a small amount of ATF out of the AWD/Transfercase vent. They told me they couldn't help out at all and that it needed to go in to the dealership. I had about 300 miles still to go, so I took it as easy as possible on the way home and it made it fine.


Let the truck cool down for 48 hours, took it out again last night and same thing started again after about 5 minutes. Like I said, going to take it in to the dealership this morning and I will let you guys know what comes out of it. Pretty odd as we have 3 other AWD Explorers in the fleet and 2 AWD Flex's and I have had 2 AWD Edges and have put massive mileage on all of them without any transmission or AWD unit issues.


Regards,


Eric

 

Well, the dealership called me back and told me that the PTO Unit (Power Take Off) was eating itself and was the cause of the oil spitting out of the breather. They have ordered a new one and will be installing it today. Thank goodness for the warranty as I expect this wouldn't have been cheap to replace or repair. Is this a fairly common issue as non of our other ones have had this issue before?


Regards,


Eric

 

you have a pto ?!?!

Wow, I thought that only came on lawn tractors, farm tractors and BIG off road vehicles


Good deal on the warranty !

 

If it's like the Edge, it's a sealed unit, no way to change (or, I believe, even check the level of?) the oil. I've seen reports that if it starts to get gummed up the venting can stop working correctly, then it'll spit oil out the vent. Hard to believe the oil would be that bad after only 29,000, but...

I've got instructions stashed away somewhere that show how/where to drill and tap for a drain/refill plug. Might be doing that at some point to my Edge. Explorer is on ESP.

 

Ford Taurus SHO's with the Performance Package, and I believe Ford Explorer AWD Police Interceptor models, and AWD Explorers sold in the Middle East, are equipped with PTO's that are cooled with engine coolant routed through the radiator, like an auto trans cooler. These PTO's are also equipped with a temperature monitor which will light up a message to change the lubricant.

These PTO's do not hold a lot of lubricant, and if the lube overheats and starts spitting out the vent, you will not have a lot of lube left to perform its job. The problem may have been a case of running too long and too quickly on a long-distance trip, with the PTO not having an ability to regulate the lube temperature.