`95 Legacy leaking BIG puddles of red fluid...

This morning my mom got up and went to take her `95 Legacy out to do errands and noticed when driving 3 miles up the road to the post office, a drip that was leaving a visible fluid line on the pavement. When she got to the post office, she noticed it was smoking pretty bad underneath the car and immediately brought it back. At that point I went outside and noticed a 3' wide puddle of oil/fluid on the driveway. I took some papertowels and soaked up some of the oil noticing that it was red color which ruled out a oil pan leak. That along with checking the engine oil showed that it was still full. So I got to noticing that the smoke was coming from the rear area of the block and I got to thinking if it was the transmission fluid. Sure enough when I checked the transmission fluid dip stick it was a little bit below L and had appearantly leaked most of the transmission fluid out.

When I looked under the car I noticed a visible dripping coming off of the exhaust (explains the smoke) to a rate of about 1 big drip every 15 seconds. I got to thinking, if this was a rear main seal, it wouldn't leak that much fluid out in a period of 12 hours. Because last night when I had her car out to go get a bite to eat, it was working fine in that no drips, no smoke, nothing was happening. Whatever happened happened between 2am last night and this morning. I called the dealership and they doubted it was the tranny pan or the rear mail seal if it was leaking that fast. They said it might be some fluid lines. Did something get tossed up under there while driving last night that severed a line??

Thoughts, ideas??

Reply to
Bradley Walker
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Scoot over a little...I can't quite see it from here, there isn't enough light. ;-)

You'll have to climb under there and have a look for yourself. Could be anything, really.

-John O

Reply to
JohnO

It might be the power steering, I'm pretty sure it uses the same fluid as the AT... which is red in color. The steering rack, along with the power steering lines is right in the area you described, right above a part of the exhaust header... There was a guy who had his power steering lines get damaged by the heat from his after market header at a local autocross... it smoked like crazy!

Check under the car, where it's leaking, if there is a bunch of power steering tubing in that area... that might be it.

Bradley Walker wrote:

Reply to
Dmitriy

Good idea.... if the tranny leaked as much as a line on the road for a couple miles, seems like the level on the dipstick would be a bit lower than just at "L".

-John O

Reply to
JohnO

The 95 legacy, auto, has two pipes, that go from the driver's side of the transmission to the radiator. Check them.

On the left hand side too, towards the front of the transmission there are several plugs, one of which could be leaking.

The other possible leak areas would be the torque converter seals and it could be a significant amount (would leak by the bottom front of the transmission), the shifter seal (doubt it would leak that much and all of the sudden) and the rear driveshaft seal(that would leak on the exhaust pipe shield)

Good luck!!

Bradley Walker wrote:

Reply to
AS

Also... eventhough I haven't dealt with ATs in a looong time... I seem to remember the ones in Subarus needing a huge amount of fluid. Something like 12 quarts. So even if you lost a quart (which would be one BIG puddle)... you only lost 1/12 of the fluid... and I'm not sure how that would register on the dip stick.

Again... the only way to find out for sure, is to get under the car and poke around. If the fluid is all over the place, clean everything up, go drive around a bit, and then get under there again to see where new fluid is appearing.

--Dmitriy

JohnO wrote:

Reply to
Dmitriy

I wanted to update everyone that the car was towed to the dealership yesterday. They called back and said that the 'tailshaft' seal had blown out and just leaked all the fluid out. They are going to replace that, do a transmission fluid flush and also (in another search pertaining to the check engine light that came on the day prior) that a coil was weak causing a cylender missfire. All for $650.

Reply to
Bradley Walker

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