How to Replace Transmission Filter Gasket Set 1995-2003 Ford Explorer SUV

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20+ years' experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts install correctly. That's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video we're going to show you how to fix a common problem with Ford automatic transmissions in the mid and late '90s. It's replacing the valve body gaskets, and the symptom basically is the transmission will just have trouble shifting. It will not shift, and then if you let off the gas it'll finally go into a gear, and that's usually a symptom that the valve body gasket needs to be replaced. The tools you'll need are pretty basic: jack and jack stands if you need to jack up your car sometimes on these Explorers, like this vehicle, you don't even really need to jack it up; 8mm, 10mm, and 13mm sockets. You'll need a cleaning solvent to clean out the transmission, automatic transmission fluid and a screwdriver to help you line up the gasket and pan at the end.

You're going to want to go up underneath, and you're going to pull down your transmission pan which is this pan right here, and here's your cross member, catalytic converter, your engine's up here, this is your transmission pan, and there's about 15 bolts around the perimeter. You want to remove all the bolts except for probably two of the back ones, and then you loosen up those back ones and start prying down on the front so that you can control how much oil comes out.

I still have the rear bolts tight, and now you can see I'm actually loosening up this front one and I'm starting to get drips all around the front of the pan. I've got a kind of a nice wide catch pan here. I'll work a screwdriver in. As soon as you work that screwdriver in, now you can see it's really starting to pour out. Just let it drain like that for a while.

What you can see here is I just placed a jack under here lightly, just to help me out while I'm getting the bolts off. I just brought the pan down, and I'm dumping the rest of the fluid that's in the pan into my catch basin. This is your filter right here. There's an 8 mm bolt right here. Not a clean job, but your transmission will really appreciate you for it. I just going to put that bolt right down in the pan down here, and now your filter comes right out, some more fluid. Okay, here now is the valve body. That's the front of the vehicle. What we want to do is just unplug there's five electrical leads, and they all just pull of pretty easily. Shake them a little bit actually, I'm sorry, that's six. Then pull this right down and out of the way.

Now you're going to remove all these 10 mm bolts. You don't need to remove this natural-finished one here that's holding this bracket. These bolts are different sizes, and you don't need to remove this natural one here either. They're different lengths, so what I suggest you do is lay yourself out a nice clean spot in your work area, and as you take each bolt out, put in the area that it goes into the valve body; that way you keep track of which bolts go where. Now a little fast forward, you can see I have them all laid out the way they're supposed to be. You also remove the four bolts that hold this servo cover up, and it comes down. Now I'm going to take this last bolt out here, see all kinds of a mess. Now I can remove my middle bolt again, you're going to get a little oily and bringing the valve body down.

Now we can see right here is our problems. This whole thing is a gasket, and right here the gasket's missing. It's been blown out, and that is a common problem on these cars and it's what causes shifting problems. While that's draining, you just want to pull your valve body gasket up and off, try and pull it as whole as you can, and again, that's your problem right there. So here we have our valve body out, and we're going to take this cover off. It's T30 torx bolts. You're going to take it straight up and off. Then you want to pull your gasket straight up and off.

At this point, if you chose to, you could clean out your valve body. I don't because there's lots of small parts in there that you have to make sure that go back in, so I just keep it flat, pull the gasket off, and then put the new gasket on, because most of the time there's not enough dirt in there to make a difference, and once you put the new fluid in it gets cleaned out pretty well; but if you did clean it out, you want to make sure that you do it with something like a penetrating oil that still has some lubrication to it, and also make sure you get all the parts back into the right spots.

You want to put your new gasket right down, and it is important that this gets lined up correctly. Wipe down our plate to just get any of the stuff off we can. You want to make sure you tighten these bolts up correctly. It's not a lot; it's only about 6 foot-pounds because it's about 70 inch-pounds. You actually have to listen very carefully to the wrench to hear the click. Now what I've done is I've put my middle one through, and I've put one of my side ones through, and I'm going to wipe all of this transmission fluid. You don't have to worry about it being perfectly clean. I put those through, and now I put my gasket on. So I've got my valve body, and I put it up there like a little pizza, making sure that, on this side, the shifter goes into place, up over the wires, make sure that that gets into where it needs to go, roughly.

Now carefully start these bolts, not really pressing it up in there, just kind of trying to feel and get that bolt started, comes in here, until we know we got it started in the transmission correctly. We don't want to pinch the gasket. So that's started, and my shifter's kind of lined up there, so now I'll put this bolt up and in, make sure it goes through the gasket right. Okay, get him started. That helps those go a little bit easier. Now I can just slowly I mean, I just kind of start putting my bolts in and work my way out until they're all in. You want to make sure this hole here is open, because that's the hole that your filter goes into, and then you just push up and hand-tighten all these.

Now starting in the middle, you want to torque these to 8 foot-pounds; the torque spec is, I think, 70-92 inch-pounds which works out to be 6 1/2 to 9 foot-pounds, so you want to I torqued them to 8 foot-pounds. I worked from the center, and then after I did from the center out, working my way around, I then just went side to side and rechecked them. There is one bolt that underneath this detent on the side, so you want to torque that bolt and then put this bolt on last. Now here I am putting on the servo motor cover, which is the four bolts. A new gasket should come with the gaskets for the valve body, so you put those four bolts on and again torque those to 8 foot-pounds. Now we can put out wiring clip back up and in, plug our connections back in, and just double check them.

I am going to speed through putting your filter and pan back on. If you want to see this in regular speed, just check out our other videos for the Ford Explorer training service. We hope this helps you out. If you've having some shifting problems with your Explorer or mid to late 90s Ford automatic transmission, it can be a blown valve body gasket. The worst you can do is take it apart and find out that it's not a blown valve body gasket, and then you put it back together and do whatever you need to do with the car; or if you find that it's one of these gaskets, then you can fix it yourself and be back on the road for pretty cheap money.

Okay once your pan's all on, you want to fill up your transmission. Your dipstick has a little grid here that shows you were full is. What you want to do is probably put about three quarts in and then start it up and let it get warm and then fill it till it's in the middle or towards the top of that grid. You want to use Mercon V type automatic transmission fluid in this Ford Explorer. If you are doing a different type of car make sure you are using the correct fluid for whatever vehicle you are working on.

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