My car has 41,000 miles. Tranny fluid hasn't been chaged.

I assume its time to do so?

Can this be affecting the problems that I am having with the car shifting late and not having the proper acceleration?

How much to change tranny fluid @ a shop?

Can any old shop do this or have to go to dealer?

Ted

 

well it will definitely make shifting a bit harsher and late if the fluid is old. i fully flushed my old fluid and it was sooo damn smooth afterwards

depends, if you just drain the pan and refill fluid, it shouldn't be too expensive. but if you do a full flush, that's going to cost a lot more money (coz' you use A LOT OF fluid)

 

rominl:

did you just change the flui din pan or do the whole new flush?

ted

 

i did the whole flush when it was about 55k miles on the car

 

If I have the pan drained and refilled, do you think that will help shifting or do I need to do the whole thing?

how much was the rough cost of your complete tranny fluid change?

ted

 

um... seriously that depends on how bad your fluid is right now (and whether there are other problems). if i were you, i would probalby just do a full flush now, since you have never done it before. and there after, say every yr, you just drain the pan and refill.

i forgot the exact price coz' i did soemthing else too, but it's something like 200 bucks for a full flush?

 

well its bad to do a flush if u have sludge build up, ur causing more harm then good. im right about 43k miles and i've done a total of 3 drain and refills (not to sure if thats good)... i started to do a drain and refill every 6k miles along with my motor oil

bananags tranny maintenance is what i do, quote from his site... informative paragraph

"If you want essentially all of the old fluid out of the A/T in one step, then you’ll need to do a A/T flush procedure (moderate cost at Lexus dealerships or a rather challenging process for a DIY job as you don't have the macinery), but it does get all of the old fluid out. This is NOT recommended on cars with spotty service records, as sludge build-up will come loose as the new ATF's chemicals will get the sludge loosened, which can clog up some vital internal parts.

If your ATF is a brown or black color, I'd recommend maybe 4 sequential drain and refills at any one time--no more. Then do a single drain and refill of ATF along with each oil change interval (i.e. for the next 3 oil changes, drain and refill the ATF at that interval as well). This will allow your transmission to slowly clear up the sludge in a gentle manner and minize any clogging risk from large amount of sludge being loosened from "shock" of new ATF fluid.

For those cars that drain out their ATF and it comes out a raspberry red color, the ATF is in pretty good shape, and I would probably just do that 1 drain and refill. Then maybe once a year from there on out.

FYI, I do a drain and refill about 2x per year, just to ensure that I have some fresh fluid in there, while getting some of the old fluid out. I change my own engine oil (with synthtetic), so removing another drain plug for the ATF fluid is no hassle for me (and realizing the savings can be significant!). It's probably overkill replacing my ATF 2 times per year, but I look at it as some relatively cheap transmission maintenance ($15 each drain and refill), as I'll be keeping my car for a few years. . ."

 

Just curious, how much is a flush from the dealer

 

A drain and fill FTW, at my dealer we only did D/F, we never flushed. Somewhere Mr. Toyota said not to. There is a 14mm drain plug on the tranny pan, drop it, let it drain, replace plug, add 3 qts of T-IV. I think the dealer recommends it at 60k, but preventative maintenance is is often over looked. I don't think it would hurt to change it every 5k, but it's not cost effective. Like Josh said, I do mine once or twice a year, just to be safe, it's easier than an oil change because there's not filter!

 

Where do I add the fluid?

The dipstick tube seems a bit small for the funnel/ATF gallon jug deal.

Thanks.

 

fill at the dipstick.

just get a narrow funnel