GRRRRR... AW4 help me please...

OK, I am not mad at the tranny by any means. This is solely my fault. The other day I was driving up a steep hill and noticed smoke behind me. Got out and looked underneath. ATF all over. Checked the dipstick, it had fluid but it was milky. So to make a long story short beep me... Turns out the rad blew internally and the anti-freeze and atf mixed. The real kicker, I think it's been like this for a bit bc I had a build up in my antifreeze but thought it was dirty (seperated) So regardless, I am the jackass here and plead nothing but ignorance.
So my question is, I have put a new rad in, drained the tranny fluid, flushed the tranny (only with dexron) and flushed the coolant When I check my dipstick on the tranny I am not loosing any fluid, but it does have a light tint to it, hence water still remains.
Is there anything I can do to get this crap out besisdes put a detergent in there? The trans has 124k on it but was never maintained, so I am concerned about blowing out seals etc. Any advise besides stop being an asshat and be more precautious with fluids? please help.. :hang:

take it to a shop that can do a full flush. They usually undo the cooling lines, then the pump will pump out the nasty as they infuse new.
If you want to to it in your driveway you're going to have to drain and fill it multiple times, when you drop the pan there is still ATF in all the lines and in the TC that is contaminated.

I should have thrown this part in. I work at pep boys in the service dept... I actually did drop the pan, change the filter, put fresh fluid in, drove a bit then pulled the lines and did a flush. However, when I flushed it I did not put the detergent in, just straight atf. My gut tells me that the "milkshake" fluid coats the insides of the tranny lines/walls etc. That is the crap I need out.
Anyone else ever have this happen to them?

Pretty much. After all, when you change the transmission fluid just at the pan, you don't change ALL the fluid (as I'm sure you know.)

Once you emulsify the "oil" and water, it tends to stick to things. You're looking at a power flush, or some "de-emulsifier" to break up the oil/water emulsion, and allow the water to separate in the pan once again. A detergent is not guaranteed to do that - they're mainly meant to break up varnish and crud. I can't think of anything that is guaranteed to work offhand - I've not dealt with this before (the last time I blew a cooler internally, I was due for an overhaul anyhow, so I had it torn to bits on the bench...)

5-90

5-90, out of curiosity, how hard are these tranny's to rebuild?
Also, anyone else have any idea's?

Do not rebuild an AW-4 they are perhaps the bset auto tranny in the world but they do not like getting rebuilt... grab another low mileage one before you rebuild it...

ATF is already a Hi-Detergeant Oil, and any oil or ATF by its very nature cleans the parts inside the tranny.

I'd change the fluid/filter and flush the tranny, which you've done, and then drive like normal and repeat the fluid/filter/flush several times at short intervals, like 100 miles, 500 miles and 3k miles. To get out the contaminates that the oil/atf is naturally cleaning out fo the trans, before it contaminates the oil/atf to bad. I would think by the third oil change and 3k miles of operation, any remaining contamination from this incident, that can be cleaned away by oil/atf, would be cleaned away by then. With luck, this should work, if the tranny is operating fine now, then I think you didn't do much damage, its just a matter of cleaning out the gunk to prevent future damage, and changing the oil/filter several times in short order will probably do that.

BTW, flushing the tranny in your driveway, I've done it. I DON'T KNOW IF THIS WILL WORK ON A AW4, it does on others, remove the return cooling line and run it too a bucket, have a helper run the motor and tranny, moving it thru the gears, as you pour new fluid in the tranny at a guestimated same rate as it comes out of the return line. Once you've poured in a little more than the remaining trapped capacity of the tranny, stop the motor, hook everything back up and check the fluid level properly and adjust to what it should be.

For my Chrysler Transaxles, that have a thermostat in the tranny, I leave the pan off with a big bucket underneath, connect a hose to the pick-up and run to a gallon jug of new fluid and flush by a helper operating the tranny, that way I bypass the thermostat that would mix old and new fluid before it leave the cooler lines.

Yes, it does get some air into the fluid, but I haven't seen any tranny problems because of it, the air works it way out in minutes, the only argument is if sucking a little air while operating the tranny during flushing is doing any damage to the tranny at that moment.

wilcharl said:

Do not rebuild an AW-4 they are perhaps the bset auto tranny in the world but they do not like getting rebuilt... grab another low mileage one before you rebuild it...

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That doesn't make sense.

I'm not saying I don't believe you, I do, but there must be a reason why rebuilding an AW4 results in a poor tranny, while most other tranny's a rebuild usually results in a almost as good as new tranny. Why is this so?

i have not personally had to go down the tranny route with mine, i know of 3 people who have and all three went for rebuilds and none got more then 40k out of thiers. I would wager that the reason is that the AW-4 has pretty tight tollerances and those just can not be obtained during the rebuild. The same thing happens with XJs and saginaw steering pumps (which i have experienced) even the best reman (cardone) does not last as long as a new one.

When my AW-4 dies (if it ever does) its going to get replaced with a junk yard unit

cjwalkeriii said:

5-90, out of curiosity, how hard are these tranny's to rebuild?
Also, anyone else have any idea's?

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The AW4 is probably one of the simplest slushboxes out there to build, in my experience. I've gone through two.

You do have to take your time to make sure you do it right (don't hurry - you can get away with hurrying through a THM or C4/C6, but not an AW4!) and make sure everything is CLEAN before it goes back together, but I put about 60K on a bench rebuild before I lost the engine it was bolted to.

However, I'd not suggest rebuilding an AW4, unless you have some experience with automatics in the first place - as has been said, tolerances are tight, and cleanliness is critical.

5-90

5-90 said:

However, I'd not suggest rebuilding an AW4, unless you have some experience with automatics in the first place - as has been said, tolerances are tight, and cleanliness is critical.

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Thats what I was thinking, hi-precision and tight tolerances, you don't meet the exact tolerances in the rebuild and it doesn't work right.

What are we talking about for tolerances during the rebuild, i.e. make sure you do the rebuild by the book, check the tolerances with feeler gauges and a dial indicator at each step that the book calls for, OR we talking it requires lots of special tools and special procedures to get it right?