What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

Do you have reason to believe your trans is toast?

 

not really.

i believe i have a leak somewhere, sprayed it all off today and going to reinspect. believe i'm low on transmission fluid. fluid around inspection plate and pan. not that it matters, fluid travels. driving to seattle tomorrow. will find out when i get there and wont be able to do anything til i get back lol

 

I have flushed mine twice now. Once at ~90K and again just a couple of weeks ago at 175K.

 

Awesome, thanks. Found a good deal on a set, gonna clean em up and paint them black. Didn't feel like painting my stock alloys because they're in really good shape.

 

So I found the rest of that ground Cable. It wasn't attached to anything after all.

 

Fluid around inspection plate isn't fun if it came from where I think it did, but oh well not the worst thing in the world. How far up the inspection plate does it go?

 

Have you driven it yet? Also check all of the interior grounds that line the left side of the drivers foot area, there's like four or five grounds there that may have been fucked with when they installed that brake controller and alarm.

 

If you are thinking main seal I replaced it when I dropped the motor in. I'm actually thinking the dipstick is causing most of it based on some drunken recollection but it's dark and i can't confirm

 

Nah not rear main, if it is ATF then I'd assume input shaft seal on the transmission

 

I have driven it - albeit a couple feet into my garage in 1st just using the clutch and brake. Once I tried shifting it back into Neutral I stalled it.

Checked all the fuses and the only thing burned was the dome light fuse. Blower motor for the climate still doesn't work along with the radio.

 

I'll take a closer look Sunday, have a good way to confirm?

 

Unfortunately no, the easiest thing would be to remove the inspection plate and see if there is atf pooling in there.

 

I love removing that... So if it's dry think I could rule out the seal?

 

Yeah most likely, it would be hard for atf to escape near that part of the drivetrain if it wasn't coming from there or something higher than that like the two piece dipstick assembly.

 

hoping for the two piece dipstick. i'm spitballing off of what we did and trying to remember how much care we treated it with during the swap.. assuming little to none, hard to know when i had so many hands in there.

i noticed the few drips and mess on the pan tonight when looking to see if i could figure out if my front/upstream is an o2 or AF sensor, apparently the 99 had two versions depending if it was CA emissions or Fed. But none of my exhaust is stock so looking under didn't help my cause there. Took a few cans of brake clean to the messy areas while holding the flashlight. A lot cleaner on driver side than passenger side. The dipstick is on the passenger side.

 

So best case bloody knuckles and dipstick issues

Worst case - drop the transmission ? @Speedytech7

 

You sure it is ATF and not engine oil dripping down the side or something. I'd say start simple but if you have to drop the trans it isn't the worst thing to change that seal.

 

Pretty sure i'm low on transmission fluid. No oil seems to be coming down. I'll confirm in light.
I suspect i'm low because I am having hard shifts and occasionally (hard to give a realistic time frame with how little i drive the t4r) i get hard jerks. mainly the first stop or two.

 

I've learned never to judge an auto transmission until everything is warmed up, they act goofy at low temps. Do you get a hard 1 to 2 shift when you move forward but let off the gas before it shifts (at any temp), cause that's pretty normal.

 

I definitely have more troubleshooting to do, and some basic things that need to do. Didn't do any tonight - But rather plan for the worst and hope for the best