Got up the courage to change my tranny fluid today. I've only had the fluid and filter sitting in the garage for three months till I ran out of excuses for why I couldn't change it. It ended up not being as bad as I thought. As I expected its hard to not make a mess. I held on to a large piece of cardboard from Christmas to lay under the car and by the time I was done it was soaked through with ATF.

Some things I learned from today,

These directions are spot on - http://www.toyota-4runner.org/mainte...tml#post393776

When you take the bolts out of the front skid plate expect them to be tight. I acutally broke one in half.

When you take the last screw out of the pan dont worry, it wont fall on you. As a matter of fact you will have a heck of a time getting it off! The advise of using a scraper (putty knife) was a good one. Getting the gasket material off of everything took a lot of time.

Be carefull when you remove the filter, it has what seems to be a quart of fluid sitting on top of it waiting to run down your arm. (Messy Stuff!)

The return hose for flushing the fluid out is the lower one. I didnt have a helper and was fully expecting ATF to fly all over the garage but it didn't. I just pointed the hose down into my oil pan and the truck did the rest. The fluid was noticibly dark but didnt smell burnt.

It took me four hours to complete the whole job. Its not hard, just tedious. I am hoping not to do it again for a LONG time!

Thanks to Mike the Wino, without his write up I woundn't even condsidered douing this myself!

2003 T4R 95,000 miles

Glad to hear it went well. One of these days I hope to get hte courage and tools to do all this stuff myself too.

I just had this service performed by the dealer, and they told me that only the fluid had to be drained and replaced. There was no need to drop the pan and change the screen. I couldn't find the instructions for it in the shop manual. I was excpeting them to do it as you and the link you posted described, but figured the dealer must know.

How much fluid did you put back in? I am wondering if your way is best or a powered "flush" is best. I have some time to think about it, just turned 50K on mh 07 Limited.

Nice! And yes, Mike's write-up is great


Does it shift a little better and drive a nicer for you with fresh fluid?

Seems to drive the same but when I pull the dipstick now its A LOT pinker then it was before.

BTW, I thought of one more little thing I learned. Keep your fingers away from the oval "hole" on the bottom of the ATF filter when you are installing, it has a really sharp edge on it. I also learned that ATF actually dosent burn when it gets into a fresh cut like you would think it would!

I put 10 quarts in. I am going to let it go for a week or so and check to see if I need to add more. Its in between the first and second indent on the "hot" mark when its warmed up so I could add a little more. Its amazing how dirty the old stuff was when compared to the new.

Very nice... IMHO you just insured that you'll get to the 200k mark with no major trans issues.

Old trans fluid and used brake fluid will burn/itch but new fluid is less bad than you would think

be sure to run through all of your gears (1, 2, 3, etc..) to let the new fluid get up in there. your fluid level should go down quite a bit and you shouldn't have to worry about it.