My car started to leak tranny fluid last week, so I took it to the shop. Today they told me that it spun the bushing on the pump in the tranny. Can someone please tell me what this means and what could have caused it. My car is a '98 SS A4 with all minor bolt-ons and 3500 stall Art Carr converter. I've had the converter in for about 2 months and have put about 1200 miles on it.

 

the front pump bushing supports the input shaft of the trans, with a faulty bushing it will most likely blow out the pump seal. for this repair the trans has to be removed from the vehicle which will be a costly repair (500-600). make sure you look at it before you go ahead with any repairs. i was leaking fluid and i had aamco look at it, they told me it was the pump seal. when i looked at it in my driveway it turned out to be the pan gasket they quoted me 600 when it turned out to be a $10 gasket that i could do myself.

 

The front pump and seal is one of the weaker areas in the 4L60E. But they are not all that common for a mostly stock vehicle. The converter is probably not a fault, but the install of it may have been a contributing factor. When installed, the converter is basically the last component to be bolted up. Once the trans is in place, the converter should be pushed as far twards the trans as possible. Ther should be 1/8-1/4" clearance between the converter and flywheel. Once it is bolted to the flywheel it will leave some clearance on the back side if you had clearance on the flywheel side prior to bolting it up... (I hope I am explaining this right). If there is no clearance then the converter is pushing on the input shaft and can cause the bearing, pump, and /or the pump seal to fail. Sounds like you might have had an install problem... or you were just one of the unlucky ones and it just failed. Who did the install?

BTW, JDohn2001 is right. Make sure it really is from the front seal and not a leak from something else. If it is from the seal, chances are that a pump failure itself is in the near future. Tend to it imediately and save other parts of the trans. And if you have a lot of miles on it (75k+), its probably not a bad idea to think about refreshing the trans internals. 85% of the work has to be done anyway.