Originally Posted by E365

Here's what you see once the pan is off.


Shift solenoids


Lock up solenoid and some other solenoid???. I had a hard-time figuring out which solenoids I needed to buy from looking at the real Toyota diagram. They listed three different "shift solenoids" and one lock up. I figured the Rostra kit had it figured out so I went with that. Plus the price. I needed to do this on-the-cheap for a guy.

Originally Posted by E365

Old solenoids and new universal ones. You can see they are not the same design....
Attachment 435372

The kit comes with a handfull of different brackets depending on which transmission you are workign with. This is the one this transmission needed, but I did not like the fit much. I needed to enlarge the mounting holes a tad to secure the solenoids better. I'll get into that more later....
Attachment 435373

Removing them and replacing them is a breeze. The old ones are attached with a single bolt (10mm head?). Remove the bolt, unplug them from the wiring harness and pop them out of the holes they are seated in. Lightly coat the o-rings of the new solenoids with some ATF and insert them into their holes.

The bracket that's included is the only one that could possibly fit (it uses three bolts, not ones that secure the original solenoids) so it has to be the right one. The problem with the bracket is that it doesn't keep the forward-most solenoid in its mounting hole securely, hence the need to elongate the orginal hole and allow the bracket to move closer to the hole in which the solenoid mounts into. I ran into the same problem with the rear solenoid, except worse. This required two plastic washers (you can see them in the picture below) to make up the space between the bracket and back of the solenoid.

Also, when the bracket is bolted to the valve body, the bracket starts to crush the rearward solenoid, taking it out of alignment with its mounting hole. This required two washers between the valve body and rearward most mounting point of the bracket. Once I modified and shimmed the bracket I was pleased with how secure and straight the solenoids were installed. If this were my car and I was willing to pay the money for the real Toyota solenoids I would have. Especially if you are going to keep the car for a long time.
Attachment 435374

Using a new gasket (and I used Permatex Ultra Grey) mount the pan back in place. *** Make sure the dipstick tube seats into the upper portion of the dipstick tube beofre you start bolting the pan back in place *** Like this: Attachment 435375
Secure the bolts according to the Permatex label if you used it. Bead, tighten until it startes to squeeze out, wait 1 hour and tighten an additional 1/4 to 1/2 turn.

Add the new fluid. Take car off ramps, start and run through all gears slowly. Stopping at (P)ark, check the dipstick. It should be in the cold range. If so, drive the car gently for 20+ minutes to get the transmission up to operating temp. Recheck fluid and adjust to be in the Hot range.

That worked for this car at least, no promises! "O/D Off" light does not come on at all now and it seems to shift perfectly, although my 20 miles test drive was in the snow so I couldn't push it hard. Also this car had a TRAC light (constantly on) and codes 43 and 41. The light only comes on now when traction is activated and goes out immediately after like it should (I suppose!?). Either the transmission fix fixed this, or maybe more likely, disconnecting the battery reset the computer and the system work as it should now.