Hey guys,I'm in dyer need of advice. I had tranny fluid in my radiator,so I'm replacing the tranny oil cooler on the side of the motor. I just drained the tranny fluid and it defiantly has water in it. How do I get all of the coolant out of the transmission? Any advice will help! At this point,even bad advice is appreciated.!!

 

IIRC that cooler you changed is for the torque converter. The trans cooler is inside your radiator. You should see a couple of trans lines attached to the underside of the radiator. Dont rule that one out. Although its more common for the TC cooler to fail than the trans cooler in the radiator. Still that is a possibility.

 

If you have a drain plug on the TQ drain that too! All you can do is fix the leak then drain run drain at least twice! There shouldn't be to much coolant in the trans. After you get the cooler off have it pressure tested to rule out the cooler in the radiator if it has one there? I thought it was on the outside but 03 may have been different.

 

I may have spouted off too soon. Now that you brought it up, Im not sure if there is an external trans cooler on an 03 CTD. My 06 has one inside the radiator, and I was going by that.......oops

 

There is no cooler in the radiator on these trucks.

The heat exchnager on the driver side rear oft he block is where the coolant get smixed in the trans fluid. The exchnager cracks internally, usually from not using a back up wrench on the fittings.

There is no way to fix the damage coolant in the trans fluid causes, aside from a rebuild and a thorough wash of the trans internally. Coolant mixe dwith any oil creates a sludge that iwll accumulate in all the small passages and mess things up. The water ion the coolant will damage the glue on the fricitons and they will start to fall apart.

You might get it cleaned and working for a while but it is like a bandaid on an amputation.