I just had my transmission completely rebuild by a professional shop and literally 10 minutes after leaving while driving it lost all of its fluid and stoped moving. Turns out a hose fitting blew off. I had it towed back to them and they did a temporary fix on the hose to test it, filled it back up, drove it around town and said it should be good to go and there’s no way that any internal damage was done. Can that be true?

I’m not that familiar with transmissions and I’d really appreciate some expert advice. I’ve read through a lot of threads that talk about very serious damage happening very, very fast when a transmission runs completely out of fluid. I’m supposed to go pick the truck back up on Monday, but I’m really not sure if this is acceptable (my gut says no).

Here are the Details:

It’s a 1995 Dodge 2500 with a 5.9 Cummins diesel and 188xxx miles.

I was driving about 45-50 mph on flat road when it started loosing fluid (I drove the same path again in my other car to retrace it and could see a solid swath of transmission fluid down the middle of the road). After about 2/3 of a mile of loosing fluid on flat road I had turned up a fairly steep hill that I climbed at 20-25 mph at about 2200 rpm. After about 1/3 of a mile the truck started loosing power. I thought it was in too high of a gear so I tried to get it to downshift by flooring the peddle but it just started shuttering and loosing more power until it completely gave up the ghost. So all in all about 1 mile of driving while the hose pumped the fluid out, some up a steep hill and it took a little less than 2 minutes to totally drain the fluid.

Is there a reasonable chance that it caused any damage or even just premature wear on the brand new parts?

The rebuild kit included upgraded parts to make the tranny capable of handling up to 600 hp. A billet torque converter and heavier friction components. (Which I was really excited about cus I want to beef up this truck and turn it into a beastly overlander)

The culprit was that they reused the original hose fitting on the side of the transmission because they didn’t have a new one to install and they thought it would be ok. Shouldn’t that have been included in a full rebuild job? He said they must not have gotten it up to that high of a pressure on their test drive cus it worked fine then.

My main concern is that I’m wondering if the transmission just burned through half of its life in that minute of running with draining fluid and now has wear or damage that isn’t detectable by a test drive. I paid a hard earned $4,500 for a newly rebuilt transmission that was guaranteed to have zero wear and tear and instead I’m getting one that could have an unknown amount of wear and tear or maybe even damage??

The test drive to show that it wasn’t affected at all doesn’t offer me much comfort since it was driving fine all the way up to the first failure that caused the need for the rebuild in the first place. It turns my stomach to think I just paid 4500 bucks for a transmission that I have no idea of the condition of the internal components and still can’t be fully confident in. The only reason I put that much money into a 25 year old truck was so I could be sure the transmission is totally solid.

Is it unreasonable to say I want a rebuilt trans that hasn’t been ran with no oil? Like demand they rebuild again it with new parts? Or return my money and they keep the trans and I’ll get a different one somewhere else?

The whole time I’ve had it I’ve been nervous about the transmission and I was really looking forward to not worrying about it anymore. But now I just get bummed thinking about it. We take this rig way off the beaten path in southeastern Oregon and road trips through Baja. The next trip was going to be a cross country trip on Highway 20. But my confidence in the transmission is totally shot now.

Am I overreacting or is this BS?

Thanks very much for any and all opinions. If I have my head in my a** feel free to tell me straight away.

 

My wife had the same experience with her van, but, it wasn't freshly rebuilt, it had 140K miles on it at the time. Cooler line blew out, dumped all the fluid, and the van stopped moving. Had it towed, the line repaired, refilled the trans, it has been working perfectly since then. It's been more than a year ago. I think you will be fine.

My wife puts a LOT of miles on her van, and she is NOT easy on it.

 

I agree with what hey you said. I just rebuilt mine. Not so long ago and the same happened to me. Blew a cooler line and drove it. Been running strong since then

 

Definitely agree with hey you and thomas I actually had this same situation happen to me back in march actually multiple times, I just had my truck towed, repaired the cooler line It was the one connecting to the bottom of the radiator. Other than one unrelated issue it has shifted great since And mine has quite a few miles Should be good 👍

 

As long as you didn't try to keep driving, it should be fine.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone. A local mechanic told me I could try to get a fluid sample and have it tested to see if there’s any metal particulate to gauge is any friction components got blasted. I’m going to give that a try.

 

Probably easier to just do a transmission oil filter change oil. If the transmission is junk there will be clutch material/metal bits on the filter. I'm cheap skate, I use a filter for the 727 for the 46re/rh transmission. its about half the price. Its the open filter vs the newer metal housing. Use ATF+4 fluid, doesn't matter on brand.

I had a transmission line blow off my transmission cooler, just after I replaced my engine in my 01 1500 5.2L truck. I pushed the hose back on and filled the transmission back up with fluid at the parking lot. Back running in 15 mins