2001 Ford Explorer Transmission Cooler Leak

Sorry for the delay but I’ve been away for a few days and I’ve just put my reading glasses back on (you know you reach a certain age and then, well, that’s another topic). Anyway, I have to think that it really isn’t worth the investment. Let’s face it, no matter how much you like your Explorer, it is 14 years old (three years older than the national average) and it does have 225,000 miles on it, which, come to think of it, isn’t really that much mileage if you drive normally, but again, that’s beside the point. The point is this: when you hit the piece of truck tire, you likely caused a couple of issues — fact is, you identified one yourself — the line, quite likely one of the cooler lines, was disconnected and sprayed fluid all over the place. And, the other issue is that depending on the size of the tire piece, it is quite likely that it smacked the tranny housing hard enough to cause a crack in the pan. In either case, you lost a considerable amount of fluid that you did replace.

However, your replacement apparently came too late. You see, transmissions run at very high temperatures — 200-degrees-plus — and if the fluid, that also acts as a cooling agent, is drained away, there’s nothing left to cool the transmission. At that point it cooked itself to the point where it isn’t working anymore. You might try replacing it piece by piece but you will only be throwing good money into a rather large wormhole. I’d keep the money and look around for a replacement. The $3,000 you will spend for a new transmission on a truck with a frame problem, as well, would be a good downpayment on a newer vehicle (you can find relatively late-model Explorers that will give you great service, not to say better mileage as well, quite reasonably priced or better if you look at auctions).