Trans failed..what are my options?
 

So, we left this evening for vacation and got 50 miles from home and the transmission gave up..spewing oil from what appears to be the front seal..oil looks like engine oil..burnt. E40OD

So then..where do I begin looking for replacements? What can I expect for a rebuild, cost wise? I'm within 4 hours of Salt Lake City or Reno..any recommendations? I think I'm gonna be sick :'(

It really depends on how much trans you need.a stock rebuild will be around 2k depending on location. a bulletproof trans is more like 4-5k
i cant see your sig for mods on my phone so im worthless.
sorry this has happened to you with ypur family.im pretty sure thats most of us worst nightmare.

Been there twice and almost the third time. Then I spent 5K on a John Woods and hopefully will not happen again. Arron has the prices down pretty close.

E40OD vs Allison transmission? Inquiring minds would like to know if this would be and option to consider when replacing the trans in our trucks. Disclaimer, I know nothing about the automatic trans, but have heard good things about the allison. :-huh

I heard its a hard conversion to do Rich but I'm like you, I know nothing about it.

Its a stock 97 extended cab, 4X4, no mods. It has to pull a 36' fifth wheel a few times a year. Like I said...glad we were close to home. Don't know what we would have done if we had been further away.

I did some searching and found this older thread, it sounds like it would not be a good idea.
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...fit-7-3-a.html

Ok...I found a used one that came out of a 97 F350 4X4 that was rebuilt by a shop in Salt Lake. I haven't called on it yet. I found another one in Colorado that's here: E40D ATS Stage 2 Transmission. Colorado might as well be on the other side of the moon tho! Lol. Thats a long haul from NV.

Another question. How difficult are these to change? If I picked up a trans jack, is it a job I can easily do myself?

If you're gonna totally switch transmissions, get a ZF5....

For what its worth :-blah Quite a few years ago I had a f350 with a 390 and c6 trans. I was loaded with a camper and towing a boat up a long grade at night, a buddy was fallowing me and let me know my truck was doing some serious smoking. We pulled over to check it out and found there was tranny fluid all over the bottom bottom of the truck and boat trailer. I thought I was all done for our short trip out of town and was ready to give up and hope I would make it home after adding several qts of tranny fluid. Well my friend convinced me to try to continue on our trip, all went well after that :) When I returned home I went to a tranney shop to get the bad news. They flushed the trans and sold me on a heavy duty cooler ( I didn't have any more problems with trans overheating after that. so the whole problem was just overheating ) :(

Thats a chance I'd rather not take, especially with the wife, a kid and two dogs along. Towing ain't cheap! Lol

If I remember correctly the allison 1000 has to have a stand alone controller to work with our trucks that costs quite a bit. Destroked does make an adapter plate for it, but I think when all is said and done you'd be into an allison as much as you'd be into a fully built e40d, and while allisons are good, they arent bullet proof.

My way of thinking is if you overheated it and blew trans fluid all over, that was black, the thing is toast. Transmission fluid should definitely not be black. If you're on a budget and can find a decent used unit for cheap, go for it. It'll last you a while if you dont put many miles on a year.

Pulling one of these yourself isnt that big a deal. When I did my trans swap my buddy and I had mine on the ground in about an hour, including beer breaks.

Long post, hope I covered everything you asked :-X22

When pulling the trans, is it better to pull the transfer case first, or keep it as one unit? What all am I going to need as far as extra parts,aside from filter kit and trans fluid?

I know that you dont want to take chances, but JFWIW the same thing Rich wrote, happened to me on one vacation few years ago pulling my TT, and the problem was just overheating.
So good luck. :-X22

:-drink

Same thing happened to me without even towing, just was in 4hi when I likely should have been crawling in 4Lo for the grade it was on. The front seal on the E4OD isn't terribly forgiving of high temps. I let it cool down, topped it up, and drove home, bought a larger cooler. Havnt had an issue since.