To fix, or not to fix? Chime in, please

[ccurrans]

So the other week, the seal on my 3rd member went out as well as the trans case output shaft seal. Talk about the suck. Anyway... after that $900 (I was out of town), 20 miles later, I notice smoke under the hood an pulled over. I was 5 miles into this drive and had fluid POURING on the ground under me. The shop towed it back and said it was nothing they did (of course not, right?) and that the trans cooler tubing had cracked and that the engine coolant and trans coolant had mixed. My engine overheated and they want another $800 to fix those issues and this is not knowing if the heads are going to be warped or not due to it being overheated. Again, this was around a 5 miles into a trip.

Question to you guys... would you put the money into getting this fixed? Do you think the heads would be straight or no? Pros and cons? Help me out guys. Thanks

 

[sleepydad]

So the other week, the seal on my 3rd member went out as well as the trans case output shaft seal. Talk about the suck. Anyway... after that $900 (I was out of town), 20 miles later, I notice smoke under the hood an pulled over. I was 5 miles into this drive and had fluid POURING on the ground under me. The shop towed it back and said it was nothing they did (of course not, right?) and that the trans cooler tubing had cracked and that the engine coolant and trans coolant had mixed. My engine overheated and they want another $800 to fix those issues and this is not knowing if the heads are going to be warped or not due to it being overheated. Again, this was around a 5 miles into a trip.

Question to you guys... would you put the money into getting this fixed? Do you think the heads would be straight or no? Pros and cons? Help me out guys. Thanks

if you pink milk shaked it, then yea things are probably messed up and you melted a lot of gaskets/o-rings. these engines are pretty tough but you are pushing it IMO.

unless you can do it yourself it's going to be expensive to get it running in top form again.

I can't tell you if it's worth it or not? is a new car payment better than a 5K repair bill for a used transmission and engine fluid flush/clean out?

 

[thegipper]

I really hate seeing these posts. Pink milkshakes rarely end well. Best case scenario, you need a new radiator, a shit ton of tranny fluid to flush out the coolant inside of it, a coolant flush and new coolant.

Worst case scenario, your transmission is now toast and your engine has warped/cracked heads.

How bad did it overheat?

If you caught it early enough and shut it down, you may be ok (at least for now).

If you can do the repairs yourself, put a new radiator in it and buy a ton of tranny fluid and some new coolant. Try fixing it yourself first, it shouldn't cost you more than a couple hundred bucks.

Just keep in mind that even if you put it all back together and everything seems fine, the transmission may need additional flushing down the road and could prematurely fail. Same goes with the engine, it may be fine but may develop a HG leak later on.

I've been through this.

I had both the transmission fail (13k miles later) and the HG blow (16k miles later) after my truck got a PMS.

Best of luck to you and I can certainly understand your pain/frustration.

 

[gamefreakgc]

To be honest with the price of gallons of ATF, you might just avoid the whole deal and install a used junkyard transmission yourself. Of course, if this isn't an option (guessing it might not be since you had a shop do the work the last time) then flush the heck out of it ASAP. The longer the water sits in there the worse it's going to get.

 

[Kanoe]

I was 5 miles into this drive and had fluid POURING on the ground under me. The shop towed it back and said it was nothing they did (of course not, right?) and that the trans cooler tubing had cracked and that the engine coolant and trans coolant had mixed. My engine overheated and they want another $800 to fix those issues and this is not knowing if the heads are going to be warped or not due to it being overheated.

This is a really strange description. Are you overly simplifying what they said?

Generally a pink milkshake does not involve anything pouring on the ground, or maybe I am wrong. And it does not generally involve overheating of the engine. This just sounds like way too many things happening at the same time, people don't generally loose the tranny and the engine at the same time - you might be the first.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me but maybe you had to be there.

 

[octanejunkie]

This is a really strange description. Are you overly simplifying what they said?

Generally a pink milkshake does not involve anything pouring on the ground, or maybe I am wrong. And it does not generally involve overheating of the engine. This just sounds like way too many things happening at the same time, people don't generally loose the tranny and the engine at the same time - you might be the first.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me but maybe you had to be there.

Agreed

Catastrophic failures aside, either the radiator cracked and you lost all your coolant and overheated or your trans cooler in the rad failed and mixed coolant into the trans - for both of them to happen simultaneously it would have literally been a shot in a million... if that is what was suggested to you, go buy a lottery ticket, stat

Back to your question, how attached to this vehicle are you? Not knowing what you put into this one so far, for $5k you are close to another 3rd Gen in price and you can move your newly rebuilt rear end into it or keep it as a spare

 

[Mark_BC]

Do a manual swap

 

[gamefreakgc]

Agreed

Catastrophic failures aside, either the radiator cracked and you lost all your coolant and overheated or your trans cooler in the rad failed and mixed coolant into the trans - for both of them to happen simultaneously it would have literally been a shot in a million... if that is what was suggested to you, go buy a lottery ticket, stat

Back to your question, how attached to this vehicle are you? Not knowing what you put into this one so far, for $5k you are close to another 3rd Gen in price and you can move your newly rebuilt rear end into it or keep it as a spare

Unless the crack happened where the radiator and transmission cooler come together, allowing the fluids to mix and leak out at the same time.

 

[ccurrans]

Unless the crack happened where the radiator and transmission cooler come together, allowing the fluids to mix and leak out at the same time.

This is what was explained to me at the shop that did the original work. I had the rear gasket and the output shaft seal replaced prior. Drove it to the GF's house, but every gear was shifting hard (never had this issue before the shop had it). The next day when I go to return the rental, 5 miles into that trip and the there is steam coming out from under the hood, the temp gauge was hot, and there was what I assume is the milkshake.
The shop is telling me the issue is where the radiator and transmission cooler come together like gamefreakgc said.

 

[rkntoy]

Agreed

Catastrophic failures aside, either the radiator cracked and you lost all your coolant and overheated or your trans cooler in the rad failed and mixed coolant into the trans - for both of them to happen simultaneously it would have literally been a shot in a million... if that is what was suggested to you, go buy a lottery ticket, stat

Back to your question, how attached to this vehicle are you? Not knowing what you put into this one so far, for $5k you are close to another 3rd Gen in price and you can move your newly rebuilt rear end into it or keep it as a spare

With this kind of luck don't go buy a lottery ticket - you would probably have to pay for all of the prizes others are winning.

If this incident was the cause of the coolant and ATF mixing and it was shut down really quick the tranny may be OK since it didn't cycle for long. Most of the bad pink milkshake outcomes seem to be from people who have no idea the exact point that it happened.

I would replace the radiator, get a cooler, and flush the crap out of your tranny. Then if it is OK go buy a lottery ticket.

 

[Danielx129]

I hear a lot about re routing to a cooler, but depending on the area you live in, that may not be the brightest idea. I personally replaced my radiator right when it needed to be replaced.