MigGunslinger
Red Skull Member
Wheeling last weekend and had an issue where we had a punctured transmission pan. While I tried to think my may through the situation logically and prevent further damage I realized that I had very little assurance that we were making the right assumptions. My TJ has an auto as well and I would like to be more confident if this ever happens to me (my trans is fully covered by the skid plate). This is a general thread about massive fluid loss in auto trannies when your tow rig or parts house is hours of hard trail away.
Since people will want to know specifics this was an AMC version Turbo 400 on a CJ-7. We shut the engine off immediately and dragged the jeep (with a lot of effort) out of the obstacle and to a flat place. We dropped the trans pan, cleaned it, and was able to use my bun welder to tack the hole closed. We then put my spare 1.5 quarts in to the trans and wheeled it to camp. At camp were able to scrounge another 2 quarts which got us to the dipstick.
Assumption 1: Shutting down the engine. My thought process was that whatever fluid was in the trans would end up in the pan and then on the ground. I also figured that eventually running the engine with no fluid in the trans would burn up the pump, not sure on the timeline. Running the engine would have made getting the jeep off of the obstacle much easier, and power steering would have helped tow it to the flat spot. Was this the right move, was it too cautious?
Assumption 2: In this situation any ATF is good ATF. From what I understand the different specifications for ATF are important but I figured a few quarts of ATF+4 in a system designed for dextron etc is better than nothing to get you off of the trail. At what point would mixing and matching the wrong fluid get you in trouble? What about power steering fluid in a pinch?
Assumption 3: there was no obvious way to get the fluid out of the cooler and bypass it to keep volume in the pan. Just something we were thinking about.
Anyone here ever lost a cooler line or pan and had to do sketchy stuff to get off of the trail? Looking to learn.
And yes, I know real men wheel manual rigs
Since people will want to know specifics this was an AMC version Turbo 400 on a CJ-7. We shut the engine off immediately and dragged the jeep (with a lot of effort) out of the obstacle and to a flat place. We dropped the trans pan, cleaned it, and was able to use my bun welder to tack the hole closed. We then put my spare 1.5 quarts in to the trans and wheeled it to camp. At camp were able to scrounge another 2 quarts which got us to the dipstick.
Assumption 1: Shutting down the engine. My thought process was that whatever fluid was in the trans would end up in the pan and then on the ground. I also figured that eventually running the engine with no fluid in the trans would burn up the pump, not sure on the timeline. Running the engine would have made getting the jeep off of the obstacle much easier, and power steering would have helped tow it to the flat spot. Was this the right move, was it too cautious?
Assumption 2: In this situation any ATF is good ATF. From what I understand the different specifications for ATF are important but I figured a few quarts of ATF+4 in a system designed for dextron etc is better than nothing to get you off of the trail. At what point would mixing and matching the wrong fluid get you in trouble? What about power steering fluid in a pinch?
Assumption 3: there was no obvious way to get the fluid out of the cooler and bypass it to keep volume in the pan. Just something we were thinking about.
Anyone here ever lost a cooler line or pan and had to do sketchy stuff to get off of the trail? Looking to learn.
And yes, I know real men wheel manual rigs