To flush or not to flush....your trans that is.
 

I have always followed some local advice to only drop the pan and replace the filter on my trans.....well I just flushed the whole thing with some advice from this board. My 2nd gen has 124k on it now.....you should have seen the fluid that came out. It looked like it had cofee mixed with it. All I did was disconnect the cooler lines up front and used a clear tube to run the fluid to an empyt container.....4qts. As I ran it, I pured fluid in from the dip-stick. The more I did this....the cleaner the fluid coming out was.....I used a total of 4gal or 16 qts. At the end it was running out a pretty red color and clear. To flush or not flush.....I choose flush! That old suff can't be good for the trans.

All I did was pour the fluid in as it was pumped out.....one gal at a time.....filling it as it came out....shutting off the engine between gallons to catch up.

Wily:bounce:

I did the same thing. I used a 5 gallon bucket to catch the fluid and made up a dip stick to attempt to keep up with the output. The problem is you can't get the fluid down the dip stick tube fast enough so I shut down twice to catch up. I had 2 cases of fluid on hand and used 20 quarts before I felt it was flushed completly.

If your fluid looked like coffee, keep your fingers crossed. I hope you don't have a transmission problem on the way!

124k and your just now changing the fluid?? Damn....suprised you didn't toast your tranny. I drained mine at 15k and flushed at 30k. I think your suppost to refresh every 30k.....someone correct me if I'm wrong :)

Depends on your driving conditions...

Do you fall under the "normal" or "severe" category?

I would say just living in Phoenix would count for severe!

I think you did the right things, in the right order.

A local shop advised me to just drop the pan...clean the screen and refill with 4 qts.....I have done that. This is the first time I flushed with 16 qts.

Wily

Did you go synthetic ???;)

Wow.. I am supprised, normaly this subject is followed with "don't change your fluid.. your tranny will go up in smoke!! (or slip into oblivlion :laugh: That has to be the biggest bunk around! My T-Bird fluid was bad (stupid kick down cable is held upside down by just a plastic push in grommet.. Yea, good design) That grommet broke and I dang near killed it.. Well, 30k ago a shop power flushed and changed the filter and I noticed a major diffrence right away (and I never noticed a problem, except when the cable fell off) IMHO.. for you guys that can not "stick it out";) do your fluid every 15k - 30k and if you never have, do it now!

So exatly how many quarts do I need? I have seen 15qts, 16qts, and even 20qts.:eeek:

That's a great idea. I can just disconnect the return line of my tranny cooler & feed that into some bucket to flush my tranny. Throw in synthetic & connect it back up normally after I've gone through about 16 qts. :D 16 qts. of synthetic will cost me about $117 USD yikes. Good thing I don't have to do it very often.

How long did it take the pump to send 15 or so quarts through the line?

Al

Long story short;

Friend of a friend had trans probs, went for diagnosis and finding it cemented together he of course needed a total rebuild.

He said, "Well good thing I never wasted money changing the fluid."

I might have the dealer flush my tranny since I am at 30K now, do you think I should have them do anything else?

I don't have a whole heepin lot of experience doing things like that so....

The big myth is that flushing your trans will granade it. True and false many years ago fords had this problem when you flush them you would move clutch fibers all through the trans and clog the valve body and then you would say good bye.:help: :bang:
toyota has a better filtering sytem and when you flush it you are flushing through the filter first ford is the opposite. in most cases if you flush your trans and it says bye bye 90% chance it was ready to go any way.

Some advice from a good trans shop here...If you have let the fluid get ugly buy a few gaskets and a new filter element and you 16 quarts of ATF. Every week or so pull the pan and clean the filter and magnet. When the fluid is the color you're after pull the pan and replace the filter. After about four weeks you should have new tranny fluid and a clean filter. Now your ready for the flush every 30K-60K. The reasoning I was given is with old seals if you change all the fluid at once they can go into shock. The change over time allows the seals to soften and keep working.
IMHO if you change fluid either way and the tranny takes a $%#@ you were running on extra time to begin with.

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How long did it take your tranny pump to send 15 or so quarts through the line? Does it pump it through rather quickly or at a drip's pace?

Al

I'd say about 2 quarts a minute (rough estimate) it's very hard to keep up. I uncapped all my bottles before I started the engine up.

Is there a write up on this somewhere?? some thing better than the amsoil page.