I am absolutley perplexed. Iv'e been out of town for a few days and thus havent driven my car until today. Before I left, the car was running fine and the transmission fluid was recently changed. I get back intending to do a little work on it and start by completley disabling the valves (and bypassing the vaccuum lines running to them) on top of the cylinder head...as suggested on here. I take the car out for a spin and it drives fine. I then pull back into my drive way and check the transmission fluid and I add a little fluid because it's about 1/4 quart too low, but otherwise the fluid looks fine. I then proceed to do some other work....I changed the PS belt and adjusted the idle slightly. Once completed I take the car out for another spin (this time it's raining very heavily). Once I get back I check the tranny fluid again to make sure I have it at the right level and it's slightly pink. Not peptol bismol pink but I can definitley tell water somehow got in there.

I am definitley going to flush the hell out of the transmission and change the filter, but I'd really like to know how water got in there. I know the most likeley candidate is the tranny cooler being cracked and taking on some water...but I havent driven in a few day and even today I didn't drive it hard at all. Up until today everything was fine. Could it have been the heavy rain I was driving in? Could it possibly be coming in through the base of the dipstick tube (I think I'm leaking a bit of fluid from here since I changed my manifold gasket and jostled the tube a bit)? Any Ideas on how to troubleshoot this would really help me out.

__________________
1983 300SD White with Grey interior