Hey everyone! I just bought my third Camaro four days ago, it's a 1990 RS with a 305 bored to a 315, a 28-3200stall torque converter and a 3.73 rear with a detroit truetrac set up. Well yesterday I was driving it back from the DMV (no more than 20 miles from my house) and noticed a ton of smoke coming from the undercarriage/rear end. A cop pulled me over for not having a tag and after he let me go (without a ticket, I worked my magic), I looked underneath and saw ALL of my trans fluid in a puddle on the ground and a trail leading all the way down the road. I'm thinking it's the front pump seal or the tc seal.
So here's my question... The kid that I bought the car from says that it's the original trans.. with over 220k miles but he apparently replaced all the seals 3 months ago. If I replace the seals, I'm just putting a bandaid on the real problem, right? If there's enough pressure to blow out a 3 month old seal than isn't there a bigger issue? I'm a girl with the strength of an 11 year old so I don't want to have to drop the trans out every 3 months since I'm doing it by myself. I want to nip the problem in the butt now so that I can drive this car with confidence in the future. Any suggestions? Or should I just get a new trans?

 

If you suspect it is in the bellhousing, pull the trans. Replace the front pump seal, the front pump O-ring and gasket, along with a new front pump bushing, and reassemble with new o-rings on the bolts and pump body.
Once the trans is out of the car and sitting on the bench, the steps I describe are a 1 hour job for a pro.

 

Id look at the oring where the tc pushes into the tranny, there's a decent chance he jacked it up putting the tc in after replacing the seals. If he put the high stall tc in at a later time after replacing the seals, it's even more likely imo.

 

Thank you both, I added some trans fluid and cranked her up... sure enough the leak is coming from either the torque converter itself or the o ring. So the trans is coming out tomorrow, and since it's the original, I'm gonna go ahead and have it rebuild while it's off since that's pretty much the only thing left on her.

 

Wow, nice to see girls interested in real cars!

But personally if I were you, I'd just convert it to a T-56, you'll get better mileage, and be able to handle more power. PLUS, a T-56 out of a 93-97 LT1 Camaro is the same exact length as a 700R4 or T5, so it's almost a bolt in conversion.

Who knows, an automatic has to get boring to everyone, even girls. Good luck with the problem though.