I just got the mechanic to drop my pan. they resolved the broken bolt issue. i'll ask tmrw (forgot at the time) how they did it.
anyways, I bought 2 quarts of Valvoline mercon v, 5 quarts of motorcraft. how is the Valvoline compared to motorcraft and are they mixable, and how's the Castrol? I was wondering for next time when I do the drain and fill, which brand should I use and would it mix with what's already in the vehicle
anyways, when they dropped the pan, they said they couldn't save my gasket and put my new napa branded gasket on there. It said manufactured by aku(something, I can't remember, it started with an a) but he gave me the old gasket too, which i'll save
but my biggest concern is, I paid for labor and brought my own parts, but I brought in a trans filter, but he said the trans filter wasn't accessible by dropping the pan and was inside the trans pump or something and that he wouldn't take apart my trans and only a trans shop would probably do it. is he right? on an 09 Taurus, is the filter not easily serviceable? or is it right next to the pan like on many other cars? if it is, I guess I bought the filter for nothing? if it's way inside the trans, has anybody ever changed the filter or had any experiences with these internal filters on ford transmissions? were they worth replacing and how did they go, or is it not worth it and could potentially mess things up since they have to take apart your trans? i'd like to know so I can see if I should take it to the trans shop to change the filter at 130k, or just pull the drain plug myself, if that's the case of the filter not being inside the pan, I won't drop the pan again since I have a drain plug which I discovered after my broken bolt mistake, but i'll just pull the plug every 30k and refill, but when I refill, I was wondering about mixing brands or how the alternatives stacked up to the oem motorcraft
and I won't have to worry about gaskets again, hopefully but I saved the old gasket in case the napa gasket doesn't hold up because I heard some trans pans leak due to a faulty gasket. is this OK? should I save my oem gasket and use it again if this gasket fails or should I throw it out since it was destroyed upon this dropping of the pan? dropping the pan this time was pretty much required because of the broken bolt and the small clearance and the impossibility of getting it out with a drill bit myself, but if the filter really is way inside, then I don't see a point in dropping the pan in the filter and i'll just drain and fill the trans myself in the future.
