Once in a while I see cars with damage on the underside. On a truck or SUV I would assume that the damage was from off-roading, but then there’s the damaged compact sedans. Did they run over something in the road? Get run off the road? Go driving on a rough dirt road? In any case, sometimes the results aren’t good.

This is a transmission oil pan on a Toyota Corolla. It had to be towed in and pushed into the shop because all the fluid had leaked out, which in an automatic transmission means no function. A manual transmission probably could work for a short while, but automatics rely on the fluid to shift.

You can see where whatever they hit scraped along before finally breaking through. These replaceable oil pans are relatively thin metal compared to the case of the transmission. In contrast to Toyota transmissions, Honda units don’t have replaceable pans, it’s all just part of the case. That means that if you hit something hard enough to puncture your transmission you’ll need a whole new one, not just a pan and fluid. Bad day.

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-Dan