I lost about a quart of ATF out of my POS auto tranny, just noticed it last night. I don't see any leaks, at first I thought one of my cooling hoses was leaking; I've been plowing through knee deep snow for the last week, figured something might have got ripped off.
What can cause ATF to disappear without leaking? I don't smell any burning and the transmission doesn't seem any worse than usual.

 

it could be going into the radiator. (do these series trucks have the cooler in the rad or separate?)

 

ATF can't disappear without leaking out somewhere, if there is no sign of a leak check the coolant. Most auto transmissions have a cooler in the rad and if it leaks you get trans fluid in the rad. The bad part is you also get coolant in the trans, which is not good.

 

The snow could have cleaned any area where it was leaking from if you were deep in it.

 

you prolly know this, but the fluid will expand and contract with temperature, thus the reason to check it with the fluid warmed up.

 

The weather here has been brutal, super hard on vehicles. Today was the first time in a week I drove the 4Runner in 2WD. Yesterday I had to knock chunks of ice out of the wheel wells and from under the engine/front differential Deep snow, giant piles of frozen slush, ice, temps in the single digits, the whole deal. It's been awhile since I checked the ATF, I'll have to keep an eye on it. There could be some damage to the radiator from a chunk of ice or something, difficult to crawl around in knee deep snow to have a look.
I will say this; for the the drawbacks of this 4Runner; the 3.0 and auto transmission mainly, this rig has been a real trooper in the snow. It's made it everywhere and I've gone around just about every other vehicle on or off the road. The Toyo AT tires are turning out to be great all around tires; dry pavement or deep snow.

 

now just imagine how much better it would be if you had a 5speed <3
but yea i know how you feel with not being able to work on your truck. last night the windchill was -13*

 

This is the first automatic trans I've had since high school, which was during the Battle of Gettysburg. Sucks.
I drove a newer Tundra today with an automatic, seemed pretty smooth, still has that whining/whistling noise.

 

haha reminds me of a quote i saw in somebodys sig. dont remember if it was on this site or not but it went
"automatics are responsible for the wussifacation of America"