Case or pan crack? Fluid leak

Toest

Toest

Greenie N00B Member
Last weekend I had done a transmission fluid change on my 2011 ms3 with about 73k. While I was finishing up I noticed a small crack on the bottom of the fill bolt entrance as shown below. The crack did have fluid come out of it when I put the fill bolt back on at the time from the fluid on the threads. I asked a family friend/mechanic about the severity and was told to watch and if anything pops up go from there.

Looking at it now a week later there is a good amount of leakage/spray on the underside of my car. I did not know about the changeover of the crush washers before hand so it still has the old crush washers on it. After some hours of looking stuff up online I do have new washers coming for replacement, But I wasn't able to find out if this is the case or the pan very well and I don't know what to do from here.

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Grab yourself a can or two of Brake Clean, some gray RTV and clean up that area, put rtv on the threads of the plug and let it set. Drive a few days then check to see if it's leaking.

As an added trick get some fluorescent oil dye. Add it to the transmission. Get yourself a UV light from Amazon for checking AC leaks then check for evidence of leakage that way. If you still see a leak but no UV trace then something else is leaking and not the trans.
 
There is no pan on the transmission just the case

Fwiw I have changed my transmission fluid twice and never changed the washer without any leaks
 
Thank you both for your help/information, Ill try out the RTV / dye get it all cleaned up.
 
Here's a picture of what I believe to be the shifter linkage area before I clean it. Everything around where the cable comes in to the linkage(?) on top looks dry, but there is that puddle of fluid where the linkage comes directly in to the transmission. Looks like I totally passed the idea of it coming from the top which seems to be the problem. I have not tried cleaning it or tried the RTV / DYE, I will still clean it when I receive my new washers and extra fluid, but for now I am keeping the other stuff off to the side for now with the new find.

Also, I apologize if any questions/descriptions are newbie-ish / green. I'm new to doing a lot of things with my car, I enjoy learning about them and trying out anything I can really do with it. So thank you for any of your guys' help / information. Any information helps.

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Story time :sweatsmile:
So about the floor jack, my car sits at about 4" off the ground on coilovers and it's a little hard to get my hand under my car properly with vision so I had just lifted it up for hand room. I really appreciate the safety note as I'm a newer guy to everything but to assure you I wasn't under the car :grinning:

Since last time I had everything ordered and delivered and received an electronic torque wrench (to make sure everything since my last mess up was not repeatable and for everything to be torque correctly)
I did the pivot shaft seal,bearing and breather replacement so far so good. No leaks and even cleaned er up a bit! 20211126_165656.jpg20211128_174252.jpgAfter all this fun stuff and letting everything cure over the weekend I drove over to my gf's to top off the missing fluid (being a little worried about any amount missing) and added dye and RTV to the fill plug, I found that the small Crack from before had grown a bit from untorque-ing the bolt for the hole for the fluid top off looking like this... I put some RTV around that crack for safety of mind for now until I can get some JB weld. 20211128_174240.jpg
Maybe I shouldn't have messed with it but the car had left some nice puddles around the house.
From here I let the bolt rtv cure over the next day again. Tonight I took a UV light I picked up from auto zone to the bottom of the car and sadly it worked great haha. After lifting it up, I found the axel seal going bad and another small crack in the drain plug area aswell that I apparently had done from my first post/transmission fluid change. (Turns out I was way over torque-ing. )20211130_182457.jpg I cleaned it up and tomorrow I'll be calling mazda for some new plugs and gaskets, and a driver side axel seal.

And for my next idea I'll be JB welding the cracks and get those areas cleaned up/new plugs and re-doing the seal with knowledgeable help.

Again thanks for any and all help!
 
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