transmission fluid change in raptor?

Transmission fluid is leaking from the pan. The dealership wants to charge me $400 to replace the trans pan gasket. They just replaced it with the fluid and filter 2k miles ago at the 60k mile mark. I am trying to eliminate more BS. The dealership could tell me they replaced the filter and fluid without removing the pan. Needed to verify.

Believe it or not they are being truthful. I have not seen this for myself but I have read that they have a machine that they hook up to the tranny that heats the new fluid and pumps it into the tranny while sucking out the old fluid. Pretty neat procedure but if you requested the filter to be changed they should have dropped the pan.

I learned a LOT when I replaced the factory pan with the aFe pan and replace the filter. Thanks to Chris at FreedomMotorsports I was able to complete the project successfully. There IS a procedure, and it's rather involved because the reading you get on the dipstick depends entirely on the temperature of the transmission. Madcowranch is right on the money, too - there must be thousands of Ford service techs with burned knuckles.

Yes , you can change the tranny fluid without dropping the pan, it's called a flush. But, if Ford was scheduled to change the filter on the 60k service then you should see a charge for the filter cost detailed out on you invoice. If they did replace the filter they needed to drop the pan, and if they dropped the pan then you might have a case about it leaking so soon after service that they performed especially if it has never. Leaked before the service!

The factory gasket is a metal and rubber composite and is reusable. When I replaced the steel factory pan with the alloy aFe pan, I opted to reuse the factory gasket rather than use the gasket that aFe supplies with the pan. Reinstalling the factory steel pan is way easy compared to the struggle I had with the aFe pan, but even with that I have experienced not a single drip.

What I'm getting at is this: I think there is only two ways for the factory pan to leak when reinstalled: the technician neglected to use the gasket and installed the pan without it, or due to clearance challenges with frame members he neglected to torque all of the pan bolts. (Since the factory gasket is a metal/rubber composite, there's no way to kink it.) Either way, the fault here is almost certainly on the tech.