Well as most of you may have read I've been having a lot of tranny issues. After some diagnostic work and having the car lifted up with chunks of the transmission apart including the casing for the drive gears where I was inspecting my final drive mod gears. I think I have finally found the source of all my troubles. Tuesday night we had the car lifted up after re-assembling the final drive mod and the casing and I started it up to let the fluid pressurize and so I could find the leak, and there it was coming right out of 3 spots on the tranny pan, it was getting dark so I didn't have the time to take it off and reseal it so I waited till Wednsday.


On Wednsday my friend Sean came down in his Spyder GS-T and we got workin on resealing the pan. We dropped the pan after much prying and tapping around the edges that thing is a BITCH to get off. We dropped the pan and our bucket for catching the fluid didn't work too well so we ended up working in a big puddle of tranny fluid for the rest of the night. Inspecting the tranny pan I found a ton of metal shavings, the magnet was completely covered it looked like a fuckin sea urchin. I'm hoping all those shavings are just from the times the fluid ran out and the tranny ran dry (no I didn't do this KNOWINGLY). We took a look at the gasket that was used when the mechanics had it open and it wasn't even CLOSE to being put on correctly it was hanging down in places down on the inside and then it was coming out on the outside edge in other places, basically a really shitty job. I put my super heat resistant heavy duty RVT sealant on there sealed it up then put the bolts back in juuust right. Of course we were doing all of this while in a big puddle of tranny fluid. After the bolts were in we ordered a pizza watched Mischief: Destroy and then went out to put the fluid in since we wanted to give the seal time to harden a bit before exposing it to fluid. After putting the fluid in Sean left and I took a shower and had to wash my hair 5 times to get all the fluid out. Got online played some RO and then went to sleep.

Thursday (Today) is the real test, tonight at around 7pm I'll be turning the key and takin it for a test drive to see if the leak is still there, if it is I'm dropping the car off when I go to pick up the gasket from mitsu tommorow and having them look at it, because without a real lift or someone around who knows the a604 I won't be able to find it. I'll try and take some pictures tonight of what hasn't been cleaned up so you can get an idea of the carnage that ensued.

whoa...that sounded pretty gnarly. good luck and i hope your tranny is ok. all the metal on the magnet doesn't sound too good.

i remember taking my pan off to change the filter....it was really messy...tranny fluid all over the place

Well I took it for a test drive thursday night, and after I took it around the block a couple times it was still leaking but not slipping. Took it for another drive a little longer and it started smoking again and slipped once. Got home checked the fluid level and put some more in it. Then I tried something I had thought about the first day. I turned overdrive back on (I have it off 99% of the time) this time I made it into the city, up 40 blocks and backk down a few blocks before it finally started slipping. Another thing I noticed was that even with overdrive on the revs were the same as when overdrive is off at certain speeds. Normally cruising at 40mph with overdrive off my revs are around 2300-2400rpms whereas with overdrive on it is under 2k. Now with overdrive on it's at 2500rpms or so at 40mph. It doesn't leak as much with overdrive on as it does when overdrive is off. Here are some pics of the areas where the fluid looks to be coming from and of all the metal shavings I found.

Also that was less than half of the shavings, the rest were on the ground.

Hmmm... those pics are of the block-bellhousing junction right?

The only thing in that bellhousing is your torque convertor, which would no doubt shave itself to death without fluid in it. It would also cause slipping. I'm not sure how it would leak, but it's possible, and any leak in the torque convertor would ooze out the bellhousing-block junction since there is no seal there.

Might wanna remove the tranny and check out your TC?

and I thought mine was fuct

you trans is fubar. Have it inspected, or learn how to work on it yourself.