What Have You Done To Your 3rd Gen Today?

@ULURU how do you like the ride of the Michelin tires?

 

got any photos of the rest of your truck!? Looks like a sweet set up

 

I have a pair off of my 18 Sport that I tinted black if you're interested. Message me for pictures if you'd like.

 

Salem?

 

Today was a collection of epic fail after epic fail after epic fail. I reminded myself why I hate fluids so much. The goal was to change the diffs, transfer case and transmission fluid. Let’s begin.

The Rear Diff
I had the correct Toyota fluid ready to go. Of course it’s cans because this is 1965. No biggie, I have a hand operated transfer pump ready to go. I go to loosen the fill plug and it’s not budging. Not an issue, I fire up my compressor and hit it with the ugga dugga and it pops loose. The drain plug, same deal. Of course I don’t get my finger off the trigger fast enough and it sprays fluid everywhere because of course it does. I whip the drain pan under the diff and let it drain. I’m grumpy because I hate getting fluids everywhere, but here we are.

So I start pumping can one into the diff. I didn’t realize the pump was directional (because why wouldn’t it be, pumps only work one way, it’s not like you don’t have a chemical engineering degree, Mike). So I aerated the can and it overflowed. This is spill #2. Whatever, I re-orient the hoses and cans 1-3 go in. Toyota says that its 3.8 liters or 0-5 mm below the fill. I’ve read some people take more, some people take less. I only have two cans for the front diff which is 1.6L. There’s some heels in the cans, so I’m trying to consolidate to use up as much of the fluid as I can.

It was at this point I noticed that the drain pan isn’t draining. Think I pulled the plug out? Of course I didn’t! So I reach in and spin it open, only to overflow the pan onto the garage floor…again. My truck is covered in Fluid Film, so now I’m covered in Fluid Film from being under there. Life’s just grand.

I decide to dip a bit into the 5th can and pump some more in until I’m fairly satisfied I’m less than 5mm below the fill line. During the 5th can the pump lines disconnect and dump more fluid all over the garage floor, because why wouldn’t it, right? I torque the bolt and decide to move to the transmission next. I’m already grumbling to myself.

The Transmission
This one should be easy, right? 2.6 quarts, I have 3 quarts of Motorcraft Synthetic GL-4 which is the hotness in the Miata world. I bought a bottle pump so this will screw in, I’ll bang the fluid in, zip the bolts back in and I’m golden. Wrong.

I get the fill plug off and promptly punch the underbody. I’m going to have a nifty under nail bruise, because that’s a great look. I get the drain plug off and put my pan under the flow. I aimed right this time and right into the pan it’s going. I’ve got the drain plug open on the basin open, we are truly banging on all cylinders here. Until we’re not. The flow, which was right into the pan decides to shift and dump yet more fluid all over the floor of my garage. This is an omen. It's not until after I pulled the drain plug do I notice the crush washers I purchased using one of the guides on here aren't the right crush washers for my truck. At this point everything's open, so I have no choice but to reuse what I have. Hopefully I'll be good, but I'll keep an eye on things to be safe.

The bottle pump won’t fit the neck of the bottle, it’s too big. Luckily I have a spare hand pump. So I put the fluid under the truck, rig up the hand pump and start to move under the truck. Of course, right into the quart of fluid which promptly falls over and dumps guess what, more fluid on my garage floor. I yell a few choice words, and reorient myself. I finally get the first quart in and when I’m almost out the tension on the hose knocks the bottle over because why wouldn’t it. More profanity.

Bottle two, I won’t make the same mistake, I line everything up and start pumping. Things seem to be going bang up and then the hose disconnects at the pump and I don’t notice immediately. Another puddle? Another puddle! I finally get so fed up I yell into the house to get the wife to help me. We finally get the fluid into the transmission, slightly over full so it’s dripping out. Fine, I throw the pan under and take some time to think about my life choices while it equilibrates. Two down, two to go.

The Front Differential.
I have the TRD skid plate on my truck With the skid it has to come off to access the drain bolt. I despise removing that thing, but off it comes. I get the truck up on jack stands and pop the driver side front wheel. I grab my hex key socket and pop the fill plug. Maybe things are finally changing for me. I then go to open the drain and the bit spins in the plug.

So yeah, no way in the world I'm going to deal with that. I will get it done at 70,000 miles, so that will put me at just about 30,000 on the fluid.

The Transfer Case
Two plugs, this can't be hard, right? Pop the fill plug without drama. I line up my drain pain (now saturated in oil) and pop the plug. I swear this is getting comical at this point. The fluid defies physics and hits the floor again!

So I grab my trusty hand pump since again it's 1950s metal cans and just pump in the liter as it's a 1L capacity. I don't have the correct washers for that either (I haven't a clue how I screwed this up when I was ordering everything) but the existing ones look decent, so I torque them down to factory specs.

I then fight getting the skid plate back on. At this point my wife has to leave and the little one is home sick, so I bang the plate back on, jump in the shower since I'm covered in FF and oil and then put it all back together and clean up after the wife gets back.

Did I mention I hate fluids?

 

Sounds like an episode of Roadkill. It happens cuz it can. I miss that show.

 

Yeppers, October crazy town

 

Or, if you had all fluids on hand you could go down to Walmart and they would have changed them all out for probably less than $100. I’m guessing.

 

Somehow I think even with my inability to properly drain things into the correct receptacle, I’d do better than a lube tech who’s torque values are measured in ugga duggas.

 

Thanks but I ordered them

 

Well, your grammar, spelling, and punctuation betray your ChemE degree. There’s that, too.
(BSME, post slide rule, pre-Commodore64; Fortran and punch cards rule!)

 

I beg to differ

 

12-in 5 lb glass-platter drive packs, 11 in floppies used to boot VAX 11/750, booting from TU81 drives. Still not AS400 though ... so ...

Trash-80 with its standard cassette drive interface ... closer ...

Does IBM Assembler language count?

 

Damn! Hope the rest of your weekend goes better!

 

Got home from work, saw a BIG box at my front door and was so excited to start working I cut open my thumb with a box cutter with a LOT of force. Blood everywhere. I grab a shop rag to stop the blood, run in the house and slap a band-aid on it, wrap the band-aid and thumb in a paper towel, wrap that whole thing with scotch tape and proceed to open the box again... left handed. It's getting dark and raining and I'm right handed without the use of my right hand. I then proceeded to install my new tri-fold tonneau cover. Well, it's on but not perfect at the moment but considering the circumstances, I'm OK with it. Tomorrow in the daylight I'll try to get it straightened out and include pics.

 

Happy Friday Tacoma World!

 

Now you’ve literally put some blood, sweat and tears into your truck! Well done my friend!

 

If you read that backwards his dog comes back to life, his truck fixes itself and his wife comes back.