My husband recently took his '97 Ford Escort in to have a used engine installed. The morning after he brought the car home from the shop he noticed a small amount of transmission fluid on the carport floor. He took the car back to the shop and was told that the front transmission seal was leaking and that it would cost over $400 to have it replaced. The service manager stated that the problem was not related to the engine replacement and therefore was not covered under the 90 day warranty. There had been no transmission fluid leaking prior to the car having the work done on it. My question is: was the service manager blowing smoke from his tailpipe when he said the seal leak had nothing to do with replacing the engine??
The shop made an error here no matter what they state although you may have a difficult time getting them to do anything about it.
Whenever an engine is removed for any reason (rebuild, replace with used, whatever) the front pump seal in the transmission (also called a torque converter seal) should ALWAYS be replaced along with the engine rear main seal.
This is not negotiable if one is doing things properly. If a shop does not replace these seals they’re incompetent or at the least non-thinking.
The point can also be made that the seal was damaged during installation of the engine if the torque converter was being allowed to wallow around too much or someone got a bit ham-fisted with the installation.
The service manager is full of it. Go figure. The vast majority of service managers and service writers have little or no mechanical abilities.
Thanks bunches for the response. I’ve printed it out and will show it to my husband. I was thinking basically the same thing that you had said about needing to replace the front pump seal when the engine was removed.
seals take a set and putting a different shaft, bearing etc you can be sure they won’t match and the seals are probably pretty hard by then anyway. That is why any numbskull would change the $2 seal if it was his car…you had a bunch of dummies work on yours, but I doubt they will acknowledge their error…If you paid by credit card, file a complaint and don’t pay and document your efforts for trying to get it repaired. Some cards offer quality guarantees as a part of their service.