Well my brand new (to me) wagon developed a leak curtosey of synthetic ATF (I think) which lead to me frying the transmission.

So I'm going to install a used trans and I'm trying to figure out which ones will fit my car.

It's an auto w/ overdrive, non-turbo standard 8 valve engine. Does anyone know which years and models have the transmission I need?

Anyone want to sell me one? :)

Thanks for the help!

I found a rebuilt 4hp-22 that a customer never picked up for only $250.

From what I can tell this should fit just fine, does anyone know if there is an automatic transmission that Volvo used on 740's between '86 and '93 that wouldn't work? It seems to me like they all fit.

I have an AW71 out of a 1990 780 Bertone, if you're interested. I was told it had less than 40k on it.

To find out what tranny fits your car call or visit you local Volvo dealer's parts department and they tell you from your VIN or from their parts computer. Ask them for the Volvo part number and not just whether its an AW70 or AW71.
You can write me at wkowsh@yahoo.com with the info and I'll take a look at the tranny I have. I also have the V6 engine that it came off of, if you're interested in swapping out your 4 banger for a six?

You can also ask your Volvo dealer what they price is on a reconditioned tranny for your car. From what I've been told the swing in and out is easy if you have an electric or hydrallic lift, but just remember to inspect your engine's flywheel for any flaws, and of course replace the engine's rear main seal since you have the tranny off.

Tranny shops in my area have quoted me between $1200 - $1500 to rebuild my daughter;'s 99 Buick Regal's transmission, and I suspect they'll charge the same for the 700 Volvo eventhough it RWD and not FWD like the Regal. You can negotiate longer warranty coverage with them, or as usually for the holiday period a lower price since everyone spends money on Christmas and not on fixing their car.

Honestly, any AW70/71 should fit. You may have to re-use your bell housing and flex plate depending on the model/year you get. That means any 240 from 1981'ish on and any 7-series with a shifter that has the electronic OD button on the side and any 940...with the last couple of years of the 9-series being the best.

Your description of the failure is suspect. Do you have coolant in the tranny fluid or tranny fluid in your coolant? If not, have you tried adding ATF letting it run a bit and then doing a tranny flush per the FAQ's? I have only heard of a couple of failures do to anything other than coolant contamination.

I didn't realize there was such a range of possible transmissions, that should make things easier.

I thought it was a given that if you run a transmission down the highway at 80mph and drain all the ATF that the clutch seals in the transmission would burn up fairly quickly. But really I know very little about transmissions so I wouldn't be shocked to find that is not the case.

The bottom of the car is coated in tranny fluid and when I coasted off the road, the dipstick was bone dry.

I added 2 quarts of ATF (which got the dipstick wet) and tried to get it to move, it went a couple of feet (literally) and even that took some high rev's.

No forward, no reverse, nothing.

If I didn't burn up the clutch seals, what is it you think is the problem?

Never read about this happening, but with that much oil on the bottom of the car it's worth investigating the following:

1. Blew the tranny's output shaft rear seal and its bushing. The bushing on the AW70's up to about 1993 wear out and then the seals leak. Unlikely you would lose so much there. Maybe if it was really bad??

2. A tranny cooling line completely snapped. Again unlikely.

I agree about draining and cleaning the screen. You have nothing to lose. Then try a flush. Those options are a lot cheaper than another tranny...:)

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95 855 GLT Sportwagon 214k, 90 244 DL 300k

Your transmission holds an incredible volume of fluid, between 1.5 and 2 gallons. If you truly lost all your fluid, it would take at least one gallon to make the transmission work correctly.

I am not saying yours is salvageable if it lost that much ATF but dropping the pan, cleaning the filter and filling it, warming it up and filling it to capacity may surprise you. This from a guy who almost never advocates cleaning the filter.

Now I am make one (relatively) safe assumption that you do not have the ZF22 transmission in your car. to the best of my knowledge they were not installed in 1992 models with the B230F anywhere in the US. If it has the button on the left side of the shifter for overdrive, it is a safe assumption that yours is and AW7X transmission.

By the way, it is not a large range of transmissions we are talking about. There are only three that I can think of AW70, AW70L and AW71. They were just such a good transmission they were used for most of the red-block cars through their entire production run (give or take the early 240's and early 740's).

I went a little overboard on the loss there, I don't know how much it lost but I do know that adding 2 quarts got the dipstick wet.

I don’t know how much I would have to lose to burn up the clutch seals, could 2 quarts do it?

I’ve got overdrive so no ZF22.

I thought the filter in these was basically just a screen like on a screen door and only caught the large pieces? Were you thinking it is clogged?

A few miles before I lost my forward motion I was getting on the highway (from a slower highway) and the car was very sluggish but not because the trans was slipping, it just went into a higher gear earlier than I expected.

I never detected the trans slipping, it just instantaneously lost power. That seemed a bit odd to me as my previous experience has been that clutch seals burning up start as a slight slip, then slip a little more and so on until you can’t move forward. I figured that because I was going 80mph the seals burned up so fast that I never got the ‘slowly slipping more and more’ experience.

I’ll pull the pan and see what I find. Maybe it’s the torque converter?

How could I narrow it down?

NONE of this sounds like a transmission issue by your description so lets start from the beginning and ignore the fact that you have transmission fluid on the bottom of your car.

If this is a turbo, carefully inspect all the turbo hoses for holes (they ALWAYS happen on the bottom of hoses so use your hands) and to make sure they are still firmly connected.

It is is a non-turbo, tell us if it is Rex/Regina or a Bosch LH2.4/EZK car.

Pull the codes of the ECU and ICU. There are instructions in the FAQ's for this.

If there are no codes, disconnect the AMM with the key off. Start the car, does it it run better than it did before?

After that you have to do the diagnoses related to all the other loss of power. potential issues.

2-quarts, if that is all it is, if is a pretty common amount of loss for a leaky tailshaft bushing/seal. If you are a little more than a quart low, the pump can suck air an you will have wierd things happen with the tranny until such time as the air has been expelled but no real damage is done. at the very least give it another quart, cycle it through the gears, get it as a warm as possible without driving it, cycle it through the gears again and check the level using the "cold" side of the dipstick.

Now try to drive it. I will bet you a case of beer your tranny is nominally OK.

Ok, I’m willing to ignore the ATF on the bottom of the car momentarily.

The non-turbo engine runs smooth as butter, no issues there at all and there hasn’t been any change in how well the engine runs that I can detect.

It’s not a loss of power in the engine, it’s the fact that the power isn’t getting to the wheels.

If I can rev the engine up to 5k while in Drive without any indication that the engine is running rough and no forward movement of the car, it seems like a fairly safe deduction that the loss of power to the wheels is somewhere downstream of the engine.

I’ll do some work on it tonight and see if I can find some more clues.

I stand corrected. This description does sound like the transmission. Sorry for doubting you.

Depending on how much fluid you actually lost, the tranny may still be salvageable but I am beginning think there is a chance it is not...rarely do I say that. It would not hurt to drop the pan (I never say that), clean the filter and do a flush. Total cost to you (depending on how hard it is to get the dipstick tube loose) is about 2 gallons of Walmart ATF and a couple of hours.

Assuming this does get you driving down the road, we need to immediately figure out how you rapidly lost all that fluid. As another poster mentioned the tailshaft seal and bushing is a prime candidate...messy job but not overly difficult. A tranny cooler line worn through at the little clip is another possible culprit. If it is the front seal, you have to pull the tranny anyway so I would replace it with a known good one at that point.

Well this is very strange, the 2 quarts I added seems to have overfilled the transmission quite a bit.

I don't think being a quart low will burn up a transmission.

Could the return line from the cooler have gotten clogged and starved the transmission?

Looks like I'll need to dig deeper.

Does the fluid smell burnt?

Update us after you "dive in" again.

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95 855 GLT Sportwagon 214k, 90 244 DL 300k

Well this just gets stranger and stranger.

I pulled the return line off the trans cooler and started the engine. It pumped just fine and the fluid smells as good as the day it came off the shelf.

I decided I would put it in drive while it's up on the ramps and see what's moving down below.

As soon as I shifted into R I could feel that it wanted to move.

So I pulled it off the ramps and backed it out of my garage.

I drove it down my driveway noticing a high pitch whirring noise from the drivetrain that was not there before. I did not detect the slightest bit of slipping in the transmission.

After about 50 yards I stopped and put it in reverse but reverse was no longer engaging at all, not even slipping, it just wasn't there.

I put it back in drive and it hesitated but then moved forward.

I drove it back to my garage and by the time I got to the garage I could not get power to the wheels any more, in any gear.

I checked the fluid again and it smells perfect.

I'm very confused by all this because I've never heard or seen a transmission with burnt clutch seals that would move the car but only for a little bit.

My experience has been that once the transmission is toast, it's toast, and there ain't nothing that will even temporarily get it to improve it's condition (despite what TransX would have us believe).

That high pitch whirring noise is about the only clue I have, it increases and decreases with RPM. It sounds like a belt that is loose and rubbing on the pulley that it is supposed to be turning. I'm not suggesting that is what is actually happening, just trying to describe the sound.

I can drop the pan tomorrow and have a look, any other ideas of what I can try?

So poking around here it seems that the whirring noise is my transmission pump starved of fluid.

Which probably means a clogged filter?

I've got a filter that I never stuck in my 240, based on what you guys told me about transmission fitament it should fit. I hung onto that damn filter for 5 years, finally my pack rat mentality pays off!

I am not going to pretend I am still able to follow you on this because this thread has bounced all over but...

I think your tranny is fine but the linkage is either toast (e-clip gone, something bent) or your engine and tranny mounts are so shot that the linkage is badly misaligned. I do not think "Reverse" is still reverse.

Your leak of of the bell housing could just be overflow of the overfill if the tranny is actually overfilled.

If you filter needs cleaning, you need to figure out why. There is a reason Volvo and most of us say it does not need cleaning. It because unless something has started going wrong, it doesn't.

You may need to stop, take a breath and explain what happened again without embellishment or what your own past experience tells you. Facts only, in order that they occurred, with detail and no commentary.

Yeah this forum format is a pain to keep track of, thanks for trying.

I dropped the pan tonight and wow what a mess, that might be the original filter in there.

The filter appears to be clogged so I think I'm on to something.

Unfortunately the filter I have does not fit so I'll have to pick one up tomorrow.

And one of the pan bolts snapped off at the head so I guess I'll be using my rusty bolt extraction skills in a tight spot. I think I'll see if I can Dremel out the center and chip the rest of the bolt out. I'm afraid to use those EZ Out's ever since I broke one off in a block and spent 6 hours grinding the EZ Out down.

So let's assume I'm correct and the filter is clogged to the point of starving the pump, would that cause ATF to spew out the overflow?

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'89 240 wagon, '90 740 sedan, '92 740 wagon

It is not the forum that is causing me trouble.

So I will try the recap and see if I got the cycle of events right:

Your driving down the highway in the "new" 740 that you have owned for XX miles and XX months. Suddenly the car stopped moving and when I got out I saw transmission fluid all over the place. This car has had no prior indications of transmission problems (?).

I had the car towed to my residence (?) where I then added two quarts of fluid and the car still does not seem to engage any of the gears as it will not move forward or back of it own power. The motor and tranny mounts are in place and not damaged, the engine revs fine in neutral and appears to have no issues. The gear selector has no slop and verified that the linkage is not damaged (?).

The fluid is coming from the bell housing area. I dropped the pan and the filter is clogged with what appears to be clutch material (?).

Did I hit most of the points?

If you can answer the XX's and give me hint if I got the question marks right, I will be happy to help further. Based off the answers, I will tell you with 90% assurance if your tranny is toast and why it is toast if you are so unlucky. Oh, one last question, is the radiator by chance new before you purchased the car?

Taking it from the top:

I bought the car a couple of weeks ago, about 700 miles ago at this point.
At the time of purchase there were no indications of transmission issues (no leaks, no driveability issues).

The transmission fluid was discolored (brown) so I decided to do a flush. I did not drop the pan, I just removed the cooler line and pumped it out while adding synthetic ATF back in.

Everything went well, car shifted fine and I thought I was home free.

About a week later I took it on a 500 mile road trip and 400 miles into it I smelled ATF when I exited the vehicle. Being in a hurry and caught up in some other things I forgot about it and continued on my way.

About 50 miles later I’m getting on a highway and notice the transmission shift into overdrive well before it should have, making my entrance to the highway rather sluggish and difficult.

About 3 miles later while driving about 80mph the engine starts revving up as I notice that hitting the accelerator pedal is no longer moving the car forward, just revving the engine. At this time I also notice a whirring/whining noise from the transmission that was not there before.

I coast 2 miles (that part was incredible) and make it to a commuter lot off the highway where I check the bottom of the car and see the ATF from front to back, starting around the bell housing.

I check the transmission dipstick and it is dry so I have my sister bring me 4 quarts of ATF (not synthetic).

I add 2 quarts blindly in a snowstorm at night with a funnel made out of a sheet of paper (why couldn’t the dipstick tube be a couple inches longer!?!?!).
I pull the dipstick and all I can tell is that it is wet, I have no idea what the level is.

I get in the car, start it up, and it lurches a few feet forward with no detectable slipping.

I think we’ve cheated transmission death and pile everyone into the car to head out. But on my second attempt when I put it into Drive I get no forward motion at all, just that whirring/whining noise again.

We get a ride with my sister and I have the car towed to my house.

At my house I can see that the 2 quarts actually overfilled the transmission quite a bit but it’s hard to tell exactly how much when you can’t drive it to warm it up.

I disconnect the cooler return line and pump a quart of ATF out. It smells good, not burnt and it seems to pump at the same rate I’m used to seeing when I flush my transmissions.

I decide to put the car and drive and get a look underneath to see what is turning and what is not. But as soon as I put it in drive, it wants to go. This is not a blown transmission I think to myself.

I get in and put it in Reverse which works great, back out of my garage and then put it in Drive. Everything works great, no slipping, no whining. That lasted about 50 yards. The whining started to return and when I stopped and put it in Reverse I got nothing, no motion at all. I put it back in Drive and it hesitated, then engaged so I circled around and put it back in the garage. By the time I got back to the garage I had no motion in any gear, the trip was about 200 yards.

I do some searching on Brickboard and find thread where someone suggested that a whining transmission is a clogged filter that is starving the pump of ATF.
I decide to pull the pan (why did they put the dipstick tube on the side of the pan!?!?!) which does not appear to have been removed in quite some time.

Inside I find a filter that is clogged up with various small particles that do not appear to be clutch seals, more like an orangeish color. The magnet in the bottom of the pan is covered in a mushy paste that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in a long time. None of the particles are bigger than a few micron, they feel like powder.

Today I ordered a new filter/pan gasket that will be here tomorrow.

I very much doubt this transmission is toast, none of the fluid smells any different than the day I put it in and I don’t see any evidence of clutch seal pieces in the pan. I also have never seen a bad transmission that worked sometimes and not others, it’s either toast or not, there’s no intermittently burned up transmissions.

I think the new filter will fix it but now I’m wondering about that ATF all over the bottom of the car and even a bit on the firewall. I think the ATF must have come out the vent/overflow because I don’t think a front seal could start leaking at such a volume in such a short period of time. Any idea if a clogged filter can cause ATF to be purged out of the transmission?

I figure that the back pressure created by the clogged filter could possibly cause this condition and I’m willing to give it a shot before pulling the transmission.

OK, I hate to say it, but you might, only might, be living on borrowed time with that tranny. Remember when i commented that the only thing that usually kills the aw7x is coolant contamination from a failed in radiator transmission cooler?
The symptom of that problem being "fixed" with a new radiator is a filter clogged with clutch materials. Hopefully I am wrong at that is not the case. If you had said it had a new radiator, i would have told you to start shopping for used transmission.

The narrative is very good and hit all the points except if the radiator was recently replace before you go the car.

I believe it's the original radiator (service records do not indicate it was ever replaced) and there is absolutly no sign of coolant in the ATF.

I think it was the synthetic fluid with all its detergents that cleaned out the transmission and all that gunk is what got plugged up in the filter.

Just last year on my 740 sedan I flushed the transmission with synthetic ATF and 2 weeks later the cooler failed which caused some kind of milky/foamy fluid to spew from the transmission vent/overflow and ATF in the coolant (which blew a heater hose).

I got very lucky on that one, replaced the radiator, flushed the transmission and cooling system out very well and I'm still driving it around today without issue.

I'll take a look at the coolant just to be sure.

I am never more happy to be wrong...than when it saves another tranny from the bone yard.

Well I guess you won't like to hear this then.

When I got the car I noticed it had red coolant. I have never seen red coolant but it had just been flushed by the dealer so I thought it must be some special Volvo coolant.

So I just went and looked closely at the overflow coolant bottle and noticed there was another layer of fluid about 2 inches down. I stuck a turkey baster in and sucked out some green coolant.

That red stuff on top is ATF.

I would assume at this point that I need a new trans but why can't I find any coolant in the transmission?

Is it even worth bothering to put new ATF (after I get a new radiator) in and see if it'll go?

You are only out the cost of the ATF to try.

That being said, never heard of one of our trannies that survived more than a few months after the triple-whammy of coolant contamination, obvious sings of clutch disintegration and dumping of fluid. The reason you tranny was "overfilled" can now be pretty easily be attributed to coolant in the in the ATF.

I guess it depends on how confident you are that there really was no coolant in the ATF now, or before you bought it (covered up by the seller with fresh fluid). The clogged filter is the dead give-away for the guy who can't see what was clogging the filter. If it ain't clutch material, flush the ATF and give it try.

I think it's shot but I'll give it a try anyhow.

It wasn't overfilled until I added the 2 quarts, before that it was low.

I still can't figure why it failed suddenly without any slipping prior to that.

Or why the fluid level was low, if coolant is being added to the trans it should have been over filled.

Well my radiator and filter will be here tomorrow, we'll see what happens.

My overdrive solenoid on my sedan is failing, I'm running out of Volvo's!

No it doesn't, I've smelled burnt ATF a few times and this stuff doesn't smell burned.

The ATF appears to be coming out of the bell housing so it seems like the front seal is leaking.

I'll have to pull a trans cooler line and see if its pumping fluid.

Any other ideas what to look at?

So which tranny do you have?
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