cancow

My 100k mile 4runner trans. fluid smells sort of burnt, but when i smell the new trans. fluid out of the bottle it smells the SAME way. I know lots of people talk of not change burnt smell fluid but the new stuff smells that way to me. Mind you when i drained the pan the fluid was like chocolate milk, but nothing strange was in the pan, no bits or gunk. Just a little bit if very fine material on the magnets. I replace the 4 quarts that came out of the pan and am now debating if i will do that again tomorrow or flush the trans through the cooling line, or do nothing. It shifts as good as ANY new car I have been in so who knows.

MTL_4runner

You'd know if it was really burnt, smells bad....I'd do a few pan drain and refills (maybe drive for 500mi between each) until it was a nice red color again on the dipstick. I don't think a flush would be an issue either if you wanted to go that route as well.

vegaskurt

Drive it for awhile, 500 miles or another 1000, then do the pan again. Its a little safer to introduce new fluid slowly into the system if you have a fear of it being burnt.

Just to note, my fluid looked great when I checked it via the dipstick, but when I drained it from the pan it was much darker. So I let the darker stuff sit in the catch pan for awhile and when I rechecked it all of the dark stuff was settled at the bottom and the sorounding fluid was cherry red. No burnt smell.

What fluid are you switching to?

cancow

I am using the valvoline Maxlife for now. Once most of the old fluid is replaced with new I plan on going with a synthetic upon the next round of fluid changes. Just my instincts here, but i dont want to introduce anything too different right away.