Just had to rescue my buddy from a parking lot on his way home from work. He has a 2006 Dak V8 2WD (he bought used 3 months ago from his brother in law who fixes up vehicles and sells them). There was a puddle of milky pink oil under the front right of his truck. Looks like his rad cooler blew, but instead of going out of the rad it blew into the cooling portion of the rad and then the oily slurry spewed out of the overflow bottle. So now he has a hole in the rad, and I am pretty sure he is gonna have coolant through the trans and trans oil through the cooling system. So initial thought is he needs a new rad. Also he needs to flush the cooling system (I also recommended removing the rad hoses and heater hoses completely to clean the oil out so it doesn't rot them) and flush the trans (not sure the best way, but I suggested draining what is in there, refilling, run it for a couple weeks or so then drain and fill again). But then I was thinking, what if it wasn't the rad that caused the failure. Is it possible for a problem in the trans creating so much pressure in the cooling circuit to blow up the rad cooler?

Also I noticed that the lower passenger side rad support mount is rotted out from rust and not attached to the truck anymore. Maybe the constant flexing of the corner of the rad caused it to fail? And then when I drove him home we noticed a few small oil marks right where the front right of his truck is normally parked. Also about a month ago he was driving and the trans acted up while accelerating, almost like the fwd clutch pack was intermittently losing pressure. It felt like he was just learning to drive a stickshift as it was bucking back and forth. It threw a code but I didn't have my scanner handy to check it at the time.

Anyone heard of something similar to this happening? I've been a heavy equipment tech for 19 years and haven't seen a rad cooler blow into the coolant portion of the rad and then cause the rad to empty itself along with the trans oil. Although on most of the equipment I work on it's basically a rad stacked on an oil cooler. My main concern is that he spends $250 on a new rad, spends all the time to do the work only to have the trans blow up the cooler again.

 

This is how it was when I got there.

 

Yes. It's most likely the trans cooler failed inside the radiator. Had this happen once with my wife's car. Pretty much ruined the trans. Clean it out. Flush the trans, it's most likely everywhere and will make quick work of the transmission internals if left for long.

 

Cool, thanks. I'm gonna recommend to him that he should get the trans flushed at a trans shop for best results. Or at least do 2-3 drain and refills.

 

Nissan had an issue like this back 10 years ago or so. Class action lawsuit. Thats the only time I've heard of this. http://www.nissanproblems.com/trends...-transmission/

That Dakota looks like it threw up it's lunch in the pic.