I have a 1993 W250 5.9 V8 Auto Transmission 127,000miles.

We use it mainly as a farm truck, but my son does drive it to school. Today the truck seemed to have had a transmission failure it would not go at all either in drive or reverse. I had to tow it home. I decided to see what would happen if I dropped the pan to see if I could see pieces of the tranny in it or not. There were some shavings, mostly on the magnet and the fluid smelled real bad. I proceeded to change the filter and clean the pan. Put it back together, refilled the fluid and took a chance to see what would happen. I was able to back it out of the garage! I then went up and down the drive a couple of times, then rechecked the fluid. Everything is looking good so far, took it for a test drive and seemed to shift just fine.

My question now is, am I still looking at replacing/rebuilding it? How much time did this buy me?

 

did ya happen to adjust the bands while you were into it?


if theres shavings, and Im no expert, but you could have 6 months.

the 46RH on my 92 d250 cummins runs about $2000 to rebuild.

 

I'll go along with the 6 month theory, when I had the exact same problem with a ford, I got about another 6 months out of it after changing the filter, then it went to the scrapper.

 

Sounds like the filter was probably clogged. When was the last time it was changed?If the trans filter gets clogged, it will lose fluid pressure and not go into gear.It is normal to find small metal shavings in the pan with that kind of mileage, thats what the magnet is for. When you find chunks of metal, then you know you have a problem. Cant say how much time you may have, but if it runs ok now,its probably fine.

 

Did you check the fluid before dropping the pan? If so, was it low? When I had my 91, it would get low on fluid and quit shifting. I'd ad fluid back to it and it shifted fine. The last I seen the truck it was still running great with original tranny. So if it was just that the filter got clogged up or it was low on fluid, you should be fine for a long time. Just keep a close eye on the fluid though...

 

Fluid level was fine, smelled kind of burnt though. So far truck is running just fine, we'll keep an eye on it and let you know if any changes.

Thanks to all that responded!