I went out of town on vacation in my wife's car and my truck sat in the garage from last thurs night until this morning. I noticed some trans fluid on the garage floor. Not a lot, relatively speaking, but more than a drip and more than I want to see without checking it out. The spill lines up more towards the front of the truck on the driver side more so than it does with the pan. I grabbed a flashlight and crawled under to see if there was anything obvious. There was not. I wiped up the spill and will check again in the morning, before moving the truck, to see if I can tell where it is coming from. I have only had the trans serviced once, last year, and I just had them drop the pan, let it drain, replace the filter and pan, and fill with fluid. The fluid on the floor appeared clean and red. Any thoughts?

 

My guess is the transfercase seal since it takes ATF+4 to fill. Could have been the small amount of fluid slung up onto the inner lip and on it's way down, it leaked out.
Check that seal. I bet thats where the problem lies. Fairly easy fix.

 

Could also be from the power steering system. The rack and pinion, the cooler and lines, or the pump. The factory calls for ATF4 for your power steering system. So check that also.

 

My bet is the power steering system is leaking.

Can't be sure till you get under there and look though.

 

You guys are correct on power steering. I didn't have time to get into it before I have to make another out of town trip so I ran it to the shop this morning. Appears the power steering return line had developed a leak at the clamp. They were able to just trim some hose and reclamp it and had to add some fluid back. $30 job. Glad it wasn't worse.

 

Same thing happened to me. My PS lines started dripping fluid mostly in cold weather through the winter. What worked for me was replacing the 3 stock hose clamps:



With new hose clamps that could be tightened down:




Cleaned lines and the pump again. No leaks for over a year

 

Yep thats exactly what they did. The used the adjustable style clamp.