Transmission oil cooler lines

If you live in the Northeast, where they are using the brine garbage that coats every crevice of our trucks, you might want to check your oil cooler trans lines. I had a leak so small in the front lines, that I never noticed it. I pulled the engine cover off a couple weeks ago and discovered the dealer never put the clamps back on when they did my engine swap, but fortunately, I don't think I had any leaks from that, but after doing my flush, my oil level was down over a quart I keep my truck coated in fluid film/woolwax, so didn't notice any moisture on the lines. Not too difficult to put your truck into temp check mode, and pull the check plug out. I wish I would have done that sooner! The flush job however, that I thought was going to be easy and just take me a couple hours... UGH! It fought me the entire time; I drained the pan and was torquing the drain plug. Before it was fully torqued, and didn't even get to the point of crushing the washer, I felt the threads pop... ugh. I was afraid some metal may have ended up in the oil pan, and wasn't sure if the threads on the pan were also damaged, so 20 bolts later, pan was off. After over an hour round trip to the dealer in Christmas shopping traffic, I had a new filter (decided to replace since I had it torn apart) a new pan gasket, and new drain plug. I was installing the pan and barely snugged the bolts. Grabbed the torque wrench and when I was on the LAST effing bolt, SNAP! Keep in mind, I'm laying under my truck in the driveway, on a seasonably warm day in NE Ohio. I grab my screw extractors and hoped I could get a grab without drilling, but no go, the bolt broke well beneath the surface, and of course, one of the least accessible bolts, on the front of the pan. So I grab my drill, and tap and die set. I was fearing the worse, as the chances of me not completely screwing up the threads on the case were slim. I started drilling (I need to buy some left handed drills) and kept trying to get an extractor to hold. The more I drilled, the more I feared how damaged the threads were getting. The Toyota Gods were shining on me apparently, as I managed to drill perfectly in the center of the bolt, and got it out with no damage! I had soaked those oil pan bolts in rust remover the night before, they were pretty ugly, but since I had my tap and die set out already, I decided to run all the bolts through a die to clean up the threads, and pulled a bolt off a 4runner I am going to part out. The clamp that holds the front cooler lines firmly to the bumper was rusted out, I took that off and was going to fabricate something to hold them later, not a big deal. So I flushed about 15 gallons of fluid through the system, had everything buttoned up, put my jumper wire on to check the level, and noticed a leak up front. When I pulled that bracket off, apparently it was rusted so much that it created a pinhole in the line, but that's the line I think has been leaking for some time. I can't believe a "few hours" job turned into a few days! But so fortunate that the threads on my pan didn't get damaged, and even more fortunate that I was able to drill out that bolt with no damage. I might just save the bolt and stick it on a magnet on my tool box, lol.

 

Very nice! Drilling out bolts is a pita.

 

I had those cooler lines rust through on my Corolla a few years ago. Fortunately, I got home and made a new set out of brake line. I lightly flared the ends to help retain the rubber hoses. Then, I zip tied the hell out of it, to the mounting area of the car. I should probably check those some day.

 

Good for you for staying with it and finally getting it fixed.