ESh

So, here is the deal. I like to do this on all cars with automatic transmission because I know that their oil is not lifetime. I am the new owner of this diamond white on grey Lexus ES with 55000 easy lady-driven miles. In 2006 and 2007 there was a well known problem with ES automatic transmission U660E called 3-4 shift flare. On first cold morning 3-4 shift, the rpm with go 300-400-700 rpm up (sometimes even more) before it engages the gear. Back then they had this problem with two kind of U660E transmissions on ES. There was a transmission A up to 06/06, and a transmission B from 07/06.
The flare on the A was fixed just by replacing the valve body with all solenoids and by flashing the tranny. The B had to be replaced with a new one. Lexus had to buy back a lot of ES350 because of this problem, because Toyota was not able to fix it on all transmissions with their first TSB.
To make long story short, valve body replacement has been done on my Lexus at 1466 miles so there was no transmission flare. Upshifts and downshifts were smooth as silk exept when I drove downhill the 5-4 downshift was a liiiittle bit harder than it should be and I decided to do this.




I bought 12 quarts of Toyota WS and Denso strainer, strainer ring and pan gasket.
The whole process took me around 5 hours. I can do it faster but I am too precise and pedantic so I like to do double check on everything.

First, I prepared the tools, towels, napkins...




1. Put 2 jackstands under the front of the car so the front tires would be up in the air. Remove the plastic that goes under the engine.

2. Take an oil container and put it under the transmission pan, remove the drain bolt and wait for oil to drain...



This is how the old oil looks like, it's dark and smells burn:





3. Put the bolt back on.

4. You have to remove the tranny pan, but there's one small problem. One bolt is over the frame so you must lift the engine because there's no way you can remove that bolt:



So, what exactly you should do? You should remove all three bolts of the active motor mount:



5. Remove the plastic cover and remove the second bolt:



The third bolt is here:



6. Remove all three bolts of the right motor mount which is located next to the power steering pump:



The third one is on the side, this one shouldn't be removed completely because that one should be lifted with jack:



7. Now, put another jack under the tranny and lift it a bit, maybe 1.5in...



8. Remove the problematic bolt so you can remove the jack. Now you can remove all bolts. The oil container should be under the tranny pan because the oil will start to spill all over and you should know exactly how much oil you get out of the tranny.

9. Remove the oil pan. It could be glued so you can use a screwdriver separate the pan from the tranny.
This is the bottom of the pan. Magnets were full of gunk and the oil around them was thick.







10. Clean both magnets:



11: Clean the oil pan, I used antisilicone cleaner:





The red plastic tube is there just to help you correct the fluid level:



12. Remove the oil strainer, 2 10mm bolts:



Old and new, exactly the same:



13. Here is the strainer ring:



14. Put it on the right place and put some new WS oil over it:

ESh

15.







This is the strainer hole. Be carefull if you want to clean it, it has an edge which is sharp as ****, I cut my finger:



16. Dry up everything with towel, put the strainer back, put 2 10mm bolts:



17. Put the oil pan back. The problematic bolt goes last. Again, lift the engine a bit. Put all the motor mount bolts back and remove both jacks.

18.Turn the steering wheel to the left and remove this plastic:





19. Remove the 24mm "WS" bolt, that's the filler hole:





19. You should know exactly how much oil you got from the transmission, I got 3 quarts.

ESh

20: Using this kind of pump, through the filler hole put 4 quarts of new WS oil in:





21.Remove the pump and put the WS plug in:

22. Remove return hose from the front cooler (driver side hose), plug it with something (put a piece of wood or a bolt) and then put another hose which would go from the cooler to a transparent 1 qt bottle:



23. So, you got out 3 qt of oil, you put 4 qt of oil in. Now, start the car and let it run until the transparent bottle is ful (it takes 4-5 seconds). Shut off the engine. Empty transparent bottle, put another quart of new WS oil in trany, start the engine, shut it off when the second transparent bottle is full...you have to put 11 quarts in total of new WS using this method. So 4 + 7.

24. Now, put the WS plug, put the return hose (which is plugged with something) back in the cooler and double check everything.

25. The oil level must be checked when the oil temperature is 40-45C (104-113F). There are 2 methods to check the oil temperature:

a) With Lexus Techstream (I have it). There you can read what the current oil temperature is.



b) On OBD2 port (OBD2 connector under steering column) using a jumper wire jump PIN 4 and 13 together.



2. With the engine on, move the shift lever back and forth between the NEUTRAL and DRIVE positions at 1.5 seconds interval for 6 seconds.

3. The D shift indicator on the combination meter comes on for 2 seconds when the fluid temperature is within the appropriate temperature range (under 40C).

4. The D shift indicator will come on again when the fluid temperature reaches 40°C (104°F) and will blink when it exceeds 45°C (113°F).

5. After confirming that the D shift indicator turns off, move the shift lever to the P position and remove the wire from terminals 4 and 13.

26. So, when the oil temperature reaches 40, open the drain plug. If there's no oil, pump new WS through the fill plug until it starts to drain. If it starts to drain, let it drain until it stops.

27. Turn off the engine and tight everything up.


The easyest way for the oil to reach 40-45C is with the engine running shift from P to D, then back to P, slowly (20-25 times). If you do this in a garage, don't forget to keep the door open while the engine is running.
Then I reflashed the transmission TCM. Today I drove it around 30 miles and it shifts as new. No flare, no hard shifts...nothing. So, see you again at around 90000 miles.
P.S. I did power steering fluid too. That was an easy job.
P.S.S. I changed the rear VVT-i hose. That's the biggest pain in the *** the world has ever seen!




This is it:









Questions?

GCL

iTrader: (1)

This is really informative, thank you.

But I think it may be a bit too involved for me, although it will depend on what the dealer would want to charge me in the future. Thus, I may end up doing it myself.

Questions:

Why do you need to reflash the TCM?
How did you do this, via Techstream?

ESh

No dealer will do this. They claim that the tranny is sealed and wont do it.

I flashed the tranny just because I want it to relearn my driving style completely. Via Techstream.
You don't have to do it though.

xanderES

iTrader: (8)

Are you a tech? Where do you find the information about the transmission flare and the resolutions? I had one of the early build cars and had to go through the whole process and didn't even know that. I was actually told that it was always an ecu issue and even had my ecu reprogrammed 2-3 times. As far as I know the early replacements did absolutely nothing to fix the trans flare issue. It wasn't until lexus came up with the reflash that customers reported resolutions.

Also, thanks for spending the time and doing the write up. Top notch work. I really never thought that taking off the pan would be so intensive. No wonder no ones ever posted up a DIY.

ESh

I'm not a tech but a good DIY guy. Local Lexus dealer boss is a good friend of mine so I asked him to push the tech guy to find out everything he can from Lexus abouth this 3-4 flare and he came out with that info. He told me that in some cases a reflash did it's job.
AFAIK, they bring a software update which had only one feature: fuel cut off before it disengages the 3rd speed which would be present until the 4th gear is engaged.

xanderES

iTrader: (8)

Interesting. That makes sense since those flashes never really fixed my flare issue but it did diminish how much rpm it would flare. Of course, it only did it for the 1st cold shift in the morning so it wasn't much of a problem.
I would have hoped the lexus engineers would have come up with a better "solution" than just cutting the fuel before the shift though.
Guess I have been giving the engineers too much credit all these years.

ESh

The fuel cut was part of a solution, maybe.
The problem was with the valve body too, the 3-4 oil line would dry over night because of the leak (oil would return into the pan) and in the morning the first 3-4 shift would flare because the line was empty and it needed some time to be filled with oil and to build pressure then it would engage?
Now, why it took so long for the line to fill up? Well, this "problem" was present only in cold mornings and when it's cold the oil is much thicker and it circulates slowly.

mlacomb

Anyone else having issues seeing the pictures? Most are coming up without an image...


<edit> good point below; I'm proxied @ work and it's just potentially getting blocked. Thanks!

ESh

I have no problems with them. Check your antivirus.


Another thing I forgot to mention, there is a fuse box next to the battery, there is a IGN 30A fuse. That's the tranny fuse. Pull it, wait 1-2 minutes and turn it back. The TCM resets itself and the tranny shifts like new.
I did that yesterday and even the MPG went up.

Lexample

I don't know if I'll ever get around to doing this, but this is an AMAZING write up! Got all the info i need if I do decided to do it. Kudos!

JeremyYoo

Firstly thank you so much for this informative post

I recently got 2006(0306)Es350 and suffer from 3-4 flare. so I am considering changing valve body assembly

It seems that 35410-33170 is what you discribed as "A" and 35410-33171 is "B"

I would like to ask you and other members
if changing my A valve body to new B can solve my 3-4 flare problems.

ESh

Nobody knows. I would do the software update first than start from there. How bad is the flare?

JeremyYoo

I would like to ask you for your understanding that my English is not perfect, I live in South Korea.^^

Its winter time here and the ambient temperatue range is between -5 to 5 degree celious.

actually, 3-4 Flare is happening through out my driving, regardless of tranny warm up.

I am not sur if the mentioned SW update has been applied before or not