[1978CobraII]

Hello again AFM nice to see you again. Been pretty busy with the little II she's gone and thrown us for a loop. In August I got in my car at about 5 pm to head to someone's house I start her up and give her a bit of gas to proceed backwards. All I see surround me is a huge puff of white smoke. My dad was at the place I was going I told him what had happened and he told me to pull out of the driveway onto the road to see if it did it again and no big surprise it did. We thought it might have been an O ring on one of the pistons. Then we remembered the original owner said it burned oil so my dad thought it was valve seals.

I went and got my friend the next day and the tranny slipped when I pulled out on the road engine pinging and white cloud of smoke comes out I'm flipping as she's dead in the water revving for about 5 seconds on a main road finally she clunks back into gear and i'm take off like a bat out of hell to get out of the way. I get home check the Transmission fluid and were down to the end of the stick. Fill it up with fluid and drive some more every time I stopped and got going again i'd blow off white smoke finally after about 3 weeks we were at our trailer and this knowledgeable guy said the vacuum modulator on the tranny might be screwed up so it draws fluid back into the T on the intake manifold and spits it out inside.

About a week ago i'm at school and read on here from none other than M II expert himself 74stang2go that my C3 requires Type F transmission fluid so I tell my dad and he's like "DAMNIT I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE GONE WITH MY GUT." I had been putting Dexatron III in it and I think that's the main problem why the modulator is ******* up so we have to drain the whole tranny and replace the fluid. Gonna replace the modulator to be safe and install a new filter.

Not as bad as the time my Fuel Filter crapped out on my way to work and I was doing 30 down the shoulder of the expressway. REAL FUN.

Pictures inclueded from before my show and my trophy.

[74stang2togo]

Originally Posted by 1978CobraII

About a week ago i'm at school and read on here from none other than M II expert himself 74stang2togo...

lol, I'm no expert, just happen to have screwed up often enough to figure a lot of it out!

If you put Dexron II, Dexron III, Mercon, or any other type of transmission fluid in an older Ford transmission it will cause problems though. When the automakers were developing their automatic transmissions, they each went about it differently, giving each the need for their own fluid.

From what I understand about the differences between them, Type F is thicker and has more friction modifiers than Dexron fluids, meaning the Dexron will cause slippage in an older Ford transmission.

If you want to just try draining the transmission and torque converter, and replacing the modulator valve, make sure you get every drop of fluid out of it that you possibly can, get a flush kit and flush your cooler and lines while you're at it; you don't want any of that old Dexron fluid in there.

I say "if" because with you already having slippage issues, the damage may already be done. If, after changing the fluid, you still have issues, you may be able to buy yourself some time with a bottle of Lucas Transmission Fix additive in place of a quart of fluid. I used it when I blew up the TH350 in my old Chevrolet a few years ago (was slipping in all three forward gears and reverse, and badly) and got another 10,000 miles out of it before it started slipping noticeably again, and another 4,000 before it finally quit altogether. The downside to using an additive and continuing to drive it is that you could do more serious damage to the transmission. The upside is, that you can buy yourself the time to save up the money to fix it right.


Hope it works out for you, let us know!

[1978CobraII]

It only slipped a little when I really got on it... if you call 3/4 of a pedal with 90 horsepower flooring it. It wasn't really noticeable. When the fluid got low it would just pop in and out of gear or that what it seemed like. She's in the barn right now waiting for my dad and I to get cracking. Then if I manage to pull some money together she's getting some power this winter. Thanks for caring.