Let's deal with the bigger (in my mind) issue first. Driving home on Friday, I smelled antifreeze. OK, coolant. Whatever. No leaks visible on the garage floor. Saturday morning, I check the expansion tank: pretty much empty. So, I got a friend over, we put it up pretty high on jack stands and took a good look. ATF all over the frame and on the seam of the TKO. Couldn't see any coolant leaks. Cleaned up the ATF, filled the expansion tank and started it up. Ran for a good 10 minutes. No dripping from the transmission, no apparent oil leaks, no apparent cooling leaks. We had originally thought it was leaking by the water temperature sender, because there was some smoke rising up from the DS rear of the block.

Just when I thought all was well, the floodgates opened. Well, maybe not that bad, the it was more than a "drip". Coolant was leaking out pretty quickly from the rear of the engine on the passenger side. Shut it off and the dripping pretty much stopped.

Here are three photos: the first is the "context" picture showing the PS side of the engine from below. The second is a closer view with a line drawn around the problem area (as best as I can determine). The third is the transmission.










Consider the second photo. It looks to me like the coolant is leaking from the seam of the PS head and the block. Anybody ever run into this? If my assessment is correct, it is not good. (Maybe I'm wrong?) I'm extremely interested in your thoughts on this.

OK, now on to the transmission. It's a TKO600. I talked to Dave (Ducky2009) and he experienced the same issue. Apparently, there is no gasket between the two pieces of the transmission case. He was told by the Tremec folks to take that apart and put permatex into the seam. He's pretty experienced, and he thought it was a pain. (or at least that was my take on his comments) Here's my question on that one: Have you run into this on a TKO, and if so, have you found any solution where you can add something to the ATF that will seal it from inside, thereby eliminating the need to take the trans apart?