Hey everyone

Back in November my buddy Mark and I changed the engine in my 04 X-Type. All that went remarkably well and aside from accidentally tearing the cv boot, it looked like the car was back to normal. A couple months ago I was a couple blocks from home and the trans start to shift funny, which is to say it started upshifting for no reason at all...

That coupled with the fact that the shift level had gotten stiffer to operate led me to believe that there wasn't sufficient trans fluid. It's been parked ever since waiting for a warm day to look at it (I live in Detroit). Today I added fluid (2 qts) and it will shift in reverse but no forward gears. The shift lever has a fair amount of resistance when approaching Drive. My goal was to add fluid and get it to the garage we changed the engine in and flush it.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

Two quarts is almost 25% of the transmissions capacity.

Methinks ya fried 'er.



(On the bright side, you know exactly what it will take to remove and replace it!)

A can of "Transmission Medic" or some-such could well be in order, maybe it will limp you to the garage you were working on the car in.

So sorry to hear.

 

ok... so for any of you that have driven their X-Type with really low fluid, did it seem to drive normally? Until the last couple blocks mine did. Wasn't shifting slowly in general. Went right into gear. I'm very sensitive about the car behaving abnormally which is exactly why I didn't drive it again until I could properly get to the trans fluid fill point. I'm hoping it's just still low.

We're gonna jack the car off the ground later this week and see if we can identify where the leak is and whether the fluid is at the right level or not.

Here's my question... IF the fluid loss mostly occurred while the car was stationary, is it possible that, without having been driven that way, the fluid is too low to put in gear, but with proper filling it will return to normal?

I'm having a hard time accepting that the transmission is likely ruined with basically little/no warning.

 

Well I'm not saying yours is toast, I will say little or no warning is exactly the amount of notice you'll receive when its time has come.

For my engine swap in the 2002 model pictured below, I lost a total of 2,5 quarts. Knowing I had lost a good amount, I started by adding one quart before starting it. Man, did it ever make a racket! I attributed it to air in both transmission and power steering since it settled in pretty soon to a more normal sound. I drove it a bit, shifted funny (odd) and still too noisy. So I put it up on the jackstands and used the top off method posted here in this forum, and ended up adding another quart and a half. Now shifts normally and is much quieter.

So I'd say your first step is confirm you have the proper fluid level. If you find your fluid level is OK, well then, as my dad used say; time to get out the sledgehammer. (OK not really but sometimes you think it might be therapeutic)

 

Well that gives me a little hope. This transmission has been super silent it's whole life including now... I just can't get it down into drive. I'll let you know more when we do a fluid level check later this week.