Oily residue on back window and lift gate

[benrlodge]

I have a strange oily residue on my rear window and lift gate of my 2009 Ford Escape, but I should mention something first...

I brought my car in for a recall related to the transmission. They said they took care of it, but, they said I was also down 3 quarts of transmission fluid. I just bought the car 2 months earlier. So I don't know why it was that low in the first place. They filled it up.

In any case, after I brought the car in, I drove on the highway for a couple of hours at about 65/70 mpg. I noticed an oily residue all over the back of the SUV. I thought it was just weird and someone splashed something on it. I washed it off the best I could but noticed it was very oily. I brushed it off and didn't think of it much, until again I took another highway drive for a couple of hours and again oily residue. I washed it off at a rest stop and kept a close eye on it while driving some more, and it started building up again. So something is going on. I brought it back to the dealership and explained all of this. They said they put it on the lift and looked at everything and didn't see anything wrong. Obviously something is wrong, so I need to "prove" it and I plan on driving it early tomorrow morning to build up the residue again and then bring it to them.

Sorry for the longwinded posting, but any idea what this could be? It seems extremely likely it has to do with something they did. When doing some searching online I found a couple postings that sounds pretty related and they said it was a crack in their transfer case. Any ideas??? It's driving me crazy and i want to know real bad what is causing this, so any ideas at all would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

[Davescort97]

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it's gotta be a duck. No seriously, It's pretty evident that you've got a leak in your Automatic transmission. That's gotta be what it is. And since they worked on it just before it started doing it....go figure. When you wipe it off with a white cloth or paper does it look red? Check your dip stick. What color is the tranny fluid? Is that what you are seeing on the back? If not it's something else. Check your powersteering fluid, coolant, engine oil and transmission fluid. It's not your imagination. It's got a problem and you need to figure it out or get someone else to do it because if you don't things are going to go from bad to worse. I would be back at the dealer in a NY minute. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Go sqeak to them.

[benrlodge]

Thanks for your reply Davescort97

I have since brought it back to the dealer, they said there was a leak in the front axle, so they fixed that but they didn't have a chance to test drive it before the end of the day to see if that was the problem. So they will be testing it this morning. However, they did say on the phone that they don't think that was the problem, so they didn't have a lot of confidence in that "fix".

In any case, it's a good point about the red color - it's not showing up red. When I wipe it it's black. So I'm not sure now if it's the ATF. Unfortunately I can't check any of this right now because it's in the shop - but I'll bring that point up. But given that this is the only thing they changed (besides the load test on the computer and an adjustment) I thought strongly that it was something to do with the ATF...
Any chance what they "adjusted" on the computer in my car made something else go "crazy" and start functioning improperly?

Thanks again Davescort97, and anyone else that has any ideas.

[65comet]

I don't know about the 09, but the 02 V6 has the tranny cooler inside the radiator and mine broke. It let tranny fluid into the coolant system and anti-freeze into the tranny. The transmission fluid floats on top of anti-freeze, so you would see it inside the coolant reservior. Searching the internet I had found several complaints of it happening to others.

[benrlodge]

Thanks 75comet - that's very interesting.

One other thing I wanted to bring up - in my first post I mentioned that they said my ATF was down 3 quarts, then filled it up for me. Could there be some kind of tiny leak somewhere that has been letting it drain very slowly over the life of the car (around 30k miles now), and for some reason, now that they filled it back up, it's leaking much harder now because there is more pressure somewhere, therefore pushing the fluid out more profusely? Just a thought - maybe there is a logical place where the "pressure" would likely cause a leak??

I know close to nothing about cars, but I'm just trying to think logically about how thing have changed since I brought the car in.

[65comet]

Over in the fordforums site there were a lot of posts about some Escapes getting the wrong dipstick that would show low fluid when it was perfect. People over fill it and the extra fluid is pumped out the dipstick tube or (I'm not sure if I'm naming it correctly) the pressure relief? valve, pressure overflow valve?, something like that.

[benrlodge]

Thanks 65 comit - I've suggested this to the dealer, and hopefully they will be able to figure this out.

As an update - the problem hasn't gone away after the leak in the front axle has been fixed, so that isn't causing this problem.