What is this - drain tube under the battery tray?

[rpfaucher]

I just had my Transmission replaced and had the PCM replaced as well... this morning I noiced a hand print sized puddle under the front left of the van... right above the puddle is a black "drain tube" this is where the puddle came from... I traced this black tube to the bottom of the battery Holder/tray... more than that I don't know... the puddle looks like oil... but is sticky and does not smell like oil. Anyone have any ideas what this fluid is and should I be concerned? I was thinking maybe its some kind of tranmission overflow tube? Maybe when they replaced the tranny this is some runoff fluid from same? Any ideas folks?

Thanks.

Ron F.
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[gromittoo]

If your van has cruise control, then you have a vacuum chamber that is part of the battery tray. I only know this because I installed factory Cruise in my 2001 van that didn't have it originally. This chamber acts as a reserve of vacuum, so that the vacuum motor of the cruise control will still work if hard acceleration is required.

What may be happening is that you have a bad PCV valve, and oil vapor is getting sucked into this chamber, and then leaking down a drain tube.

Otherwise, it is coming from your battery. another possibility is they spilled tranny fluid in the battery tray as they topped off the fluid level.

[rpfaucher]

Thanks for the reply... you were pretty close with the leaking tranny fluid into the battery tray, whew... seems that it ended up being coolant... the coolant resevoir (sp?) is located next to the battery tray... the plastic snap on lid had come off... it was spewing coolant into the tray, then the tray has a drain with a hose... where the fluid was draining from... for a minute I was seeing $$$ again, sigh. Have put about 3-4K into this buggy in the past 3-4 months... had the AC go, the tranny go, the PCM go and the Fuel Pump go... enough already. Thanks again for the reply.