Technical Transmission pan magnet

The “refrigerator “ type magnet in the 700r4 I have, didn’t have that much on it. Wow.

 

Allison puts magnets on the filters, when you change the filter, you move the magnet to the next one after cleaning. Most all used a magnet inside the pan with no glue.

 

I’ve got a TCI aluminium pan on the TH350 in my avatar. It came with a steel drain plug with an inbuilt magnet. There were a few slivers on it last oil change, a few flecks of aluminium glitter in the pan, and a small amount of black inorganic stuff on the bottom (the bulk fluid was beautifully clean). Car gets wailed on repeatedly at the track, and daily driven.

cheers,
Harv

 

I’ve done my own transmission fluid and filter changes for years and I’ve never had that much metallic debris in the pan. Usually just very fine black and silver powder in the residual fluid. Those similar-sized pieces of metal would tell me something is wrong and that the trans needs to come apart. So the magnet may be helping prevent additional damage, but it looks like that one is eating itself up.

 

Transmission housings don't wear really, so what the housing material is has little affect on metallic particles inside the trans. Clutches are non metallic, but clutch plates are steel. The clutches in an automatic transmission have the greatest wear of any parts internal to a transmission, and the steel plates between clutches That stack of clutches, and steel plates can create a lot of very fine particles that can eventually plug up orifices, and cause trans failure. A magnet is cheap insurance to keep all thos particles trapped in the pan.

 

You can bet that the factory puts those there for a reason .
Otherwise,,they would save the cost of the magnet .
There are plenty of steel parts in an automatic,,,,,usually just make a metallic powder .
Big slivers need to be caught so they don’t also destroy the pump and valve body .

Tommy

 

Back in the day, we used to tell new guys starting out in the transmission field, the magnets were there to polarize the valvebody.
Many believed it.

Bill

 

First there is fuzz
then there are slivers
then you get chunks
eventually you can read part and serial numbers

 

I had one that when I dropped the trans pan, everything had a thick coating of aluminum dust and small chunks. The magnet was covered with chunks of steel and metal slivers. What amazed me most was I actually drove it into the garage before I dropped the pan. The rebuild was done on a complete used transmission and the original was the core at the JY.