an interesting thing...

I was driving home tonight, and I drifted close to the curb(and I'm still not exactly sure what happened) but what I think happened is that my wheel dropped into one of those roadside gutters and pulled hard to the right causing me to run all up over the curb and what not. Anyway it hit pretty hard, enough to bounce the jeep almost. I didnt think much of it, but right after that I turned and a car pulled up behind me and I could see smoke in his headlights, and I was like thats not good....then I saw smoke coming up from my hood....again...not very good. My temp and oil gauges were fine and it was only a couple hundred yards to the parking lot, so I drove it there. When I got out I discovered a puddle of transmission fluid forming, and a trail going all the way back I assume to where I hit the curb(I followed it most of the way to see). So I call up a friend and he comes over and we look at it and decide it was probably a hose because it was puddling under the engine and not back by the transmission. So we crank it up to find fluid spraying out of a gash in one of the rubber hoses connecting two ends of a metal hose that runs back along the oil pan. Luckily it seems to be an easy fix and I am getting a new hose tomorrow.

Does anyone happen to have an idea how I managed to do that.

I had a tranny cooler line blow off one of the metal connectors, but not a gash. I know that the rubber part of the hose (mine anyway) comes so close to the mech. fan that I had to make sure I had a short loop avoiding it. As it is it still only clears the fan by about 2". Is it possible that that part of the hose got knocked in to the path of the fan when you "bumped" the curb?

P.S. My "trail" of fluid was a good mile long when we went back down the road.

I've seen guys smack there tranny cooler lines with the UCA or something and cruch the metal part. It may have flopped up and been cut by the fan blade. I usually put a couple of extra cable ties on mine as tie downs just in case, I do a good bit of bouncing around.

Get a manual trans. Then it won't happen.

I had the UCA bend and tear a my tranny cooler line while on a trail. It wasn't completely damaging and I made it home, by my undercariage was soaked. Because of the location I didn't want to mess with trying to fix it so I got a new one from the Jeep dealership for 65 bucks. Easy to change out if that is the route you are going to take. But I would say that is what happened to you.

well we figured out what happened today. The oil pan has a lip on it around the edge, and the upper control arm pinched the rubber tube against that edge. put almost 2 gallons of fluid back into it.

I had a gash on a transmission line on a trail one time. Wasn't a difficult trail or anything, just a fire road (on the Molalla river, for you Oregonians). The Jeep was driving fine, fine, fine, and then I stopped to take a picture and it wouldn't move. I had to limp it about 30 miles with a pint of power steering fluid in the transmission.

That transmission still works perfectly, 10,000 miles later. These AW4s are TOUGH.