Okay, got some new gear oil and filled the t-case up to the fill plug today. It sat all night with both plugs out so it would be as drained as possible. No larger amounts of fluid in the pan on the floor or anything, looked about the same as yesterday. Still the mystery...I think ATF...fluid.
Drove it down the road for about 15 minutes and it's shifting a bit funky. That first shift from first to second is always a bit soft and hesitant in the morning or after sitting and cooling for many hours. I've put that up to the half red, half brown color of the ATF and figured I'll do a pan drop pretty soon. 95% of the time after that first shift it goes along great and shifts normally. Sometimes it shifts screwy at the next 1st-2nd but by far it does not.
This time it's does the usual weird first shift but then something else. I get up to about where I think 50-55 is and it should be about to go into 3rd gear, at least from how it's been shifting before. Well, now the thing shifts, the rpms go down, I get up to around 55mph, and then whoom I loose revs and it doesn't seem to want to go much faster. ??? I'm going about 55mph and it's chugging along around 2800rpm.
Do this several times to verify it's repeatable and head back to the garage. Following the FSM procedure I check the trans fluid with the engine running and the vehicle in park. Now I barely have any ATF on the dipstick! Just a little bit on the bottom of it, not even to the bottom cold line...
I figure, "damn, it's gone into the t-case."
Nope, I open up the fill plug and a bit of what looks like warm, froathed up gear lube comes out...I figure it should look like that. Kinda milky brown and froathy...it's got other stuff in there with it and it came off the road like 3 minutes before...right?
I figure the bit coming out the fill hole is from the stuff expanding from the heat of the t-case gears while moving. Okay, so I pull the drain plug and about 1.8 quarts of warm, brown and milky looking stuff that smells like gear lube. No real trace of ATF other than the stuff maybe being a bit contaminated by whatever was in there before.
This is why I like manual transmissions...
Thoughts?