6R80 Teardown to Rebuild: Ford Automatic Gearbox

Stripping down one of these ford gearboxes again, they always seem to never ever get a oil change from the dealerships and that's probably the main cause of them failing as well, I mean why don't they just add a gearbox flush along when they do the oil on the motor? or is it perhaps incompetence from most of the technicians working at these dealerships? or don't they include them in the service manual?

Even though they break down, they are not the weakest of automatic gearboxes, I myself think its a pretty good design and very simple to tear down and build, the more complicated stuff occurs when working on the valve bodies of the gearboxes and in general most automatic gearboxes. And no you wont see a lot of gears, this is a fully automatic gearbox.

I'll show you my quick run through of how I do it, keep in mind some steps are left out, sometimes you cant explain everything in words or even in pictures. But anyone who has even a little bit of mechanical knowledge can tear down one of these 6R80 gearboxes.

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So I kind of already started working here, luckily I didn't go too far yet🙃

After removing the oil sump pan from the gearbox it was clear that the failure was caused by burned clutches, a common failure, probably because of heavy loads or just pure bad driving technique, notice the clutch linings where I moved the magnet? That all mixes up with the oil and tends to start eating at the contact points inside the gearbox.

I simply pop out the oil-filter its no hard task, its only held in place by a rubber seal, exposing the valve body completely. Left it to drain out.

Removed the 12 'T30" drive bit bolts holding the valve body into place, knowings which ones is easy, the rest of the bolts are 'T27" drive bit, so you I really cant get it wrong.

Quote Before removing the valve body completely I had to remove the socket into which the vehicle's gearbox harness plugs into.

I later realized you can see the missing bolts in this picture, and here it is 😁 my bad, HUSH HUSH. The other 3 are hidden on the left side just below the solenoids, all of them are very easy to access and once loose its very easy to lift out, sometimes it tends to stick, when that happens I only give it a little wedge, nothing serious.

Quote Remember all of the rubbers beneath the valve-body, some of them are easily lost and might press you into a pinch for parts searching. AND that ain't no FUN at ALL.

After getting everything removed and out of the way for me to be able to remove the pump housing I flipped the gearbox back on its belly and let it drain some oil out of it while I remove the pump, it makes the job a little less dirty further on.

Grabbing the puller designated for this, and only this task 😂 don't get me wrong, we have a lot of these tools, BUT THIS ONE is only for pulling the pumps out of the automatic gearboxes and nothing else, it gets treated like gold in our shop.

After applying the tool and all of the components working together I am ready to remove the pump from the housing. It almost never struggles to come out, but one day is one day and I am waiting for that day, that old rusty and frusty farm pickup's gearbox 🤠😅

The pump pulled off completely and set down to drain, notice the dirty oil on the table? that's suppose to be red-like in color. Fresh ATF (Automatic Transmission Fluid) is almost Spar-letta like red or cool-aid red. When pump is removed the internals of the gearbox was next up for me to

The rest of the work is fairly easy and goes quite fast, basically I just pull on the main shaft and most of the clutch stacks will come out together but in separate bodies. Even though they are hard I always try not to drop it too hard in order not to bend the housings of the clutch stacks.

I'm left with only half of the gearbox to strip, but this is where it gets really daunting and sometimes frustrating and maybe sometimes you're just lucky and everything clips out fast.

Getting the biggest cir-clip plier we have in the shop. LEGITLY the biggest one, and yes I know this ain't quite the right tool for the job, but its what we got and its what I am going to use.
So after I failed a few times getting the fins hooked onto my cir-clip plier I finally got it and I am now able to somewhat wedge pull this one out, being constantly aware of where my fingers are, because if it slips it would make a very big owie.

So for everyone who knows a thing or two about vehicle's well they would know that this is really one hell of a cir-clip and definitely not used in a lot of vehicles or a lot of components, its aquite stiff little bugger this one, and makes removal very very hard without the right tools.

Once that cir-clip is out of the way I was able to pull out the rest of the internals of this 6r80, and now you can see the complete gearbox internals in the exact order, if it was a 2x4 gearbox it would just have a flange at the end of the output shaft. Most of the work is now done and the clutch packs needs to be opened up for inspection and diagnosis.

Only one of the clutch packs that I opened up, Ill give extensive information on the clutch packs in a different post some other time. Its basically just a friction ring and then a steel ring and so it goes on, that all together combines into what we call a clutch stack

This sun gear along with the planetary gears are the only actual gears you will find in this specific gearbox, its a double gear pack so it has the same gears in the drum just behind it.
It boggles my mind how these small gears can take the weight that 3.2 liter motor along with the weight of the body.

Once I removed all of the internals except the park gear which is not needed to be removed (except if physically broken) I can now let my casing stand in an upward position and let the remaining dirty oil drain out of it before sending it to the wash bay.

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