Can someone please quickly tell me where? I need to take one of the company car for long distance travel and want to make sure its top to par, as the thing has been heavily abused (I mean utilized) by many others. I popped the hood the other day and can't seem to find the sucker dipstick anywhere.
You probably won't believe me and then you will probably laugh about it, but in reality, it doesn't have one. Why? the dipstick costs money and too many people put engine oil in the tranny and tranny oil in the engine. I really don't blame them. That is, until the tranny starts to leak or you have to add a shift additive under a factory recall. Your focus probably doesn't have one either.
Ford has eliminated the ATF dipstick in many models, cars/trucks/SUV's.
It's not extremely difficult to add if needed, but a challenge to check the level as part of cursory check-overs.
Rob
Did you try looking in the back set? ;)
mike
If it's like the one on my Grand Marquis, it's handle will be black, and under some electrical harness :)
Why don't they shoot people designing those things?
;)
Is this a CVT or the 6 speed?
You probably don't have a dip stick. The CVT transmissions don't have them at all. Some 6 speeds have them, some don't. If it was there, it would be at the front of the drivers side of the engine compartment near the air filter box.
Ford (and other manufacturers) have been eliminating transmission dip sticks in recent years. It seems that people don't know how to check transmission fluid (usually done with the transmission hot, idling in park) and often overfill the reservoir, or even worse, pour in the wrong fluid, often with dire results. It also makes it harder for Uncle Joe's Discount Auto Repair and House of Ill Repute to inflict the latest miracle transmission additive on unsuspecting Customers (again, often with dire results). Modern automatics rarely leak, and when they do, it means they need to be fixed.
I would not worry too much about the transmission fluid.
Regards,
Ed White
What about checking the fluid for color & smell? that can tell a lot about a transmission...
You could always unhook a cooler line to get a sample.
I am assuming this is a warranty thing. Ford (and many others) have decided the dangers associated with people overfilling or miss filling the transmissions is greater than the advantages of allowing for easy fluid checks. For most passenger cars, Ford doesn't recommend routine fluid changes. I've always been a proponent of routine transmissions fluid changes. I've never actually changed fluid and found it to be discolored, so I guess I am doing it plenty often enough. On the other hand my parents never had the fluid changed in their vehicles, and they never had any transmission failures either. Usually by the time the fluid is brown and smells bad, unfortunate things have already happened.
Ed
No this isn't a warranty thing. This is a money-saving thing. They can use the same transmission in a lot of different bodies and don't have to engineer different dipstick tubes for them. The vehicle speed sensor now doubles as the transmission dipstick on a lot of these Fords. You have to unbolt it of course. This is a similar approach to how manual transmissions and rear axle fluid levels are handled. Another technique is to use a standpipe in the drain plug. You intentionally overfill the transmission then let it warm up and open the drain plug until the fluid stops draining out. I think that one is on the 4R75E
Note that with any of these schemes it would be very simple to fabricate a real trans dipstick. Pull the pan and braze on a copper compression tube fitting. Put the pan back on and run a copper line from that up into the engine compartment. Buy a universal trans dipstick and put it into the line. Fill the transmission to the correct level as per the manual, then pull the dipstick and mark the level on the stick. Instead of copper you could also use fuel-quality rubber hose.
Ted
Is this your assumption, or is this documented somewhere? I am guessing you are just guessing (as was I). Probably both explainations have some validity.
The 5R55E uses the standpipe method (as do transmission from other companies as well). My Fusion with the Aisin-Warner 6 speed Automatic still has a dip stick (and warnings all over the place to NOT use Mercon ATF). The new Ford
6 speed FWD Automatic doesn't have a dip stick. My Nissan Frontier has a dip stick, and it has an actual drain plug (something I wish all automatics had).But why bother? What percentage of people ever check the transmission fluid? How many people actually do it correctly? And, at lesat for me, when I check the fluid it is often difficult to figure out exactly what the level is on the stick (clean hot fluid). The standpipe method (done correctly) is very accurate. Dip sticks are not (at least for clean hot fluid).
Why are modern automatic more likely to leak fluid than a manual? If you leak enough fluid out of an automatic, it quits working, possibly with minimal to no additional damage. If you leak the fluid out of a manual, it will keep working until a bearing fails (been there, done that).
Ed
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