Thought I had a picture of it (can't find it now), but if I remember correctly the mode controller has an orange rubber gasket/ o-ring (for lack of a better term) that seals the two halves together. Sounds like someone split your mode controller apart already and used gasket maker to replace the original rubber gasket. If you were removing orange globs of gasket maker, maybe it was the old gasket that had been eaten away by the transmission fluid leaking on it.
Either way, glad that you got it fixed that the VX is shifting well.
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
-Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless