In a bit of a spot here. Mistakenly removed lower valve body large dog leg cover and later discovered three 5.5mm plastic balls & one 0.245 inch plastic ball in my catch basin along w/ a 0.078" x 0.218" long pin. I believe the later may be trash from some past activity - please advise. The BIG problem is where do they go? I see what appears to be several chamfered holes but don't really want to guess at their location - CAN ANYONE HELP? This is all happening under the car, 1988 740 GLE, nonturbo, 8-valve w/ new headgasket. The reason I'm in here is that I found water (milky fluid in trany)w/ kickdown cable binding. Found a great write-up but unfortunately did not define location for these balls.

I'm assuming you mean the area shown in the pic below. I know it's not a large pic but hopefully it will help. If you'd like a larger one or more pics let me know and I can send them to you. The red circles indicate where the 5.5 mm balls are located. You will see there are 4 in this one (AW71L). Not sure why yours would have only 3. Is it a lockup trans or not? The blue circles indicate where the pins are located. I had a pin fall out when I was doing this job but I can't remember exactly which spot it went into. I hope this will help you enough.

Regards
Brad

PS I did that write up. I looking into redoing it though with more pictures.

Brad, nice of you to respond w/ picture. I believe I got the three 5.5mm balls in the correct location & put the larger 6.3mm brown ball in the middle. I guess that pin did come out the transmission, not in there now, but running fine. Took 36 guarts to flush out milky fluid by return to radiator method. Of course put new radiator in. Are those pins just for locating plate as I didn't remember seeing any others? I followed JDS response below:

I'm looking at the 240 manual for the AW70 (TP30868/1). It shows four 5.5mm balls in the lower valve body.

Orient the lower cover with the short edge to the top, and where the dogleg cover attaches toward the top.

One ball drops into the square hole next to the middle of the three screw holes used to hold the upper edge of the dog-leg cover in place. Note that the ball can cover a gap in the right wall of that hole.

Now go to the left of that middle-screw hole and follow that short channel downward to its end. The second ball drops into the square hole on the other side of wall you just touched. The ball can cover a gap in the right wall of that hole.

Now go left and down slightly to a screw hole and beyond it to a rectangular hole that also has a gap in its left wall. That's the home for ball three, and ball four goes in a similar rectangular hole to the left of that one. The gap in that hole is in its right wall.

Hope that helps.

PS: I seem to remember that one of these balls wears down over time, and that results in delayed/abrupt upshifts. If that is true, this looks like a chance to replace that smaller ball with a new one.

jds

I looked at the recondition manual (TP31635/1) for the AW series...

The centre of the three nearby balls is used when the KD inhibitor (only used on Euro units) is not present. Straight english: US units have 3, some Euro units only have two 5.5MM balls. The 6.3MM ball should have been placed in the location indicated by the lowest of the red circles in Brad's picture. As all of the check balls operate against holes in the separator plate, the boo-boo in sizes will not be critical unless the small one eventually wears away to the point that it passes through the hole. That is exactly the issue with the one in a different location that causes a banging 1-2 shift. The "big" one is only 15% larger than the others. Leave it alone unless you have reason to go back in there.

In case you look at the green book - the 5.5 balls are labeled 11C (the optional location marked "x") and the 6.3MM one is called 12C.

I'm not really sure what those pins actually do. They are held in place when the cover is on. Maybe they are simply locating pins as you suggested. I'm happy to hear everything worked our for you. I'm in the process of redoing the valve body service website. It should be online in a few days. Most importantly, it contains bigger pictures. Will post a message on BB when it's up and running.

Kind Regards
Brad