I agree with you kennyr44 regarding the transmission fluid...I did the procedure myself. I just won't trust someone to do that procedure on my car, I went to the dealer to buy some washers and even they don't sound confident doing the service...probably because a younger tech screwed one up and fried a 12k dollar transmission. Roadfrog uses a dealer that he trusts and they've treated him well there, so he's one of the lucky ones.

When you do the drain and fill you only get - like you said - a small amount out. The first time I did mine the fluid was dark...too dark for my tastes, so I dropped the pan and did everything (filter, gasket, etc). I just followed the temperature procedure. A lot of people think because this is a Lexus, that the car has a metal screen filter, when it actually is a felt style...the people at the dealer didn't even know that, for some reason. In my opinion those should be changed once in a while. I drove 40k miles or so after this procedure and did a simple drain and fill last week...the results were much better this time around, as the fluid looked new. I'll probably go 50k miles next time before I do another.

I have a Flo Dynamic transmission fluid changer machine, the thing works great, but I'm afraid of cross contamination, so I don't use it on my car. Which is too bad because the thing is so easy to use and it's dead on accurate when it exchanges fluid...plus it only takes minutes to exchange 12 quarts.

 

Good to know. So maybe I will dump and fill a couple more times and then take the pan off and change the filter. That way I wont contaminate the new filter with the old dirty fluid. Amazon has the filter and gasket kit for $32 shipped.