How to Drain/Refill Automatic Transmission

Well...went through the process, except I forgot to shift through ALL the gears. Did the whole n-d thing and buttoned her up at an OK trickle. Think I need to go through the gears (P-1) and re-check or.... ?

 

sub'd. Ready through the first post and few after that. I'm at work and don't have time to read through all of this but has anyone mentioned whether the 2wd prerunner V6 has the AT TEMP light or use the "D" light? If not, I'll just check when I'm off work and look for that light on my dash.

 

Question: Does the Transmission have to be "cold" before you drain the fluid? And then you refill what came out (plus 1/3 quart), warm the fluid up, then check the level?

 

Thank you, gearcruncher. So, I should:

1. Drain (measure drainage), then add 1/3 quart more.
2. Start engine to get trans to temp.
3. Once it gets to temp, pull the overfill plug.
4. Let it trickle if anything comes out. If nothing comes out, turn off truck and add more fluid. Repeat 2-4.

What does running allow during the checking process? Just curious. Reason I ask is because the transmission fluid will continually get hotter effectively making the 115-130 degree mark invalid.

 

If you turn the truck off, the transmission pump will also stop spinning. The pump is what puts the positive pressure in the fluid lines so the fluid will flow to the cooler and aux cooler.There for all the fluid will drain back into the pan, giving an incorrect reading. But as far as the tempature increasing while checking the fluid, it won't increase as fast as you think. It would take multiple minutes to increase from 115 to 130 degree. I takes me like 20 + min of ideling to reach the desired temp of 115.

 

Makes sense. Thanks for the response!

 

Put it in gear, hold the brake and rev to about 2k rpm, it will warm up quick

 

Haha. Indeed it will! What also will work and don't put as much strain on the torque converter is applying the parking brake and putting it in drive. Warms up much quicker!

 

So, I drained the transmission fluid last night. 3 quarts came out. So, I added approximately 3.3 quarts back in. Started the truck and let the transmission warm up. Pulled the check plug and about 1/2 a quart came out. That seems odd that 1/2 a quart came out versus 0.3 quarts. An insight on why more fluid came out that I overfilled? That now means my transmission has less fluid in it that when I started.

 

Assuming everything was done according to plan, your transmission may have been slightly overfilled?

Lots of talk on this forum about 2nd Gen Tacoma transmissions being under-filled. Humans fill these things and some times err in either direction.

 

It appears to be shifting fine so I might just roll with it for awhile and see how it behaves. Ran the freeway to work this morning and it only ever got to 100 degrees, so that's good.

 

Hey thanks for the post! Very helpful....only drained approximately 1.5 qts. Just got my '08 about 6 months ago and didn't start the 'lurch' until a month ago. Found a slight leak on one of the hard lines going to the cooler and hopefully patched that up. Hopefully when i get the level back to where it should be I will lose the Tacoma 'lurch'!

 

planning on doing the fluid change in the next few weeks -- thank you for the write up

 

I don't know if anyone posted this before; I found it helpful.
I'm curious about step 11 though, as that seems like one should take off the OBD jumper after activating temp test mode...

10) Move the shift lever to the D position, and quickly move then back and forth between N and D
(once per less than 1.5 seconds) for at least six seconds. This will activate the oil temperature detection mode. Standard: The ATF temp. warning light remains illuminated for 2 seconds and it goes off.
11) Return the shift lever to the P position and disconnect the terminal TC.
12) Idle the engine to raise the oil temperature. 13) Immediately after the ATF temp. warning light turns on, lift the vehicle up.
D The ATF temp. warning light will indicate the ATF temperature according to the following table.

(Insert table here)
ATF Temp. Warning Light:
Less than optimized temperature-Turn OFF
Optimized temperature-Turn ON
More than optimized temperature-Blinking

 

Hope you had the truck very LEVEL during this process.... If not... might want to do again... on level ground...


Just saying...


Over

 

It couldn't have had more than a 2-3 degree angle to it. I put a level on the frame prior to the service. Even then, the trucks have rake to them, so the only way to get it perfectly level would be to hoist it. In the grand scheme of things, do you think the 2/5ths of fluid would do damage? Surely, others have ran with drastically under filled transmission compared to mine.

 

sub'd

 

This place is great. Can find almost anything. Had question on OBD jumping, and here it is.

 

If you have an OBD 2 scanner that has real-time monitoring, you can watch your trans temp that way. That's what I did when I followed this procedure.