DIY Automatic Transmission Fluid Flush...4th Gen V8
I’m using the
DIY: Full Flush for Automatic Transmission from the TacomaWorld Forums, originally posted by mountain lion. Many thanks to him. I’m going to quote his instructions, then add some comments where I feel they are important for application to a 2004 SE 4Runner, V8.
I did a full flush on my automatic transmission (06 V6 TRD Sport 2wd without towing package) today [45.1k miles]. I haven't seen any detailed DIY write up's on the process so here it goes (feel free to make sticky):
Overall it's very easy to do and not much more complicated than the standard ~3qt drain/fill. The process if you have the tow package is essentially the same, except your ATF cooling lines will be going to a small oil cooler vs going to the radiator. If you have a 4x4, the transmissions will look different than my pictures, but this may still help to guide you through the process.
Outside of having access to a flush machine, this is the next best thing – and free except fluid costs. A very small amount of original fluid does get mixed in, but it’s negligible. Without dropping the pan and attaching a special machine to the actual ATF pump, this works just as well as a standard flush machine. There is a metal screen (not a true filter) in the pan, but from everything posted prior, it’s not necessary to drop the pan and clean it this early – 100k miles or longer is fine.
*Supplies needed:
4.0L V6 w/ Automatic Transmission
1. 13+ quarts of Toyota WS ATF fluid (Amsoil ATL or RedLine D6 are also compatible and fine to use [I bought 15 and used 14 quarts of Amsoil ATL])
2. 2 crush washers from dealer (part #: 35178-30010 ) (you can probably get away with reusing the originals, but they're only $2 new)
3. 5mm hex socket, 14mm socket, 12mm socket, 24mm socket and ratchet
4. Gear lube pump
5. Graduated bucket + milk jug (or the like) to collect old fluid
6. 16ga or thinner wire
7. Torque wrench
8. Pliers
9. Nitril/latex gloves
10. Plenty of paper towels
**Service Specs:
A750E/F Automatic Transmission Dry Fill = 10.9 liter / 11.5 US qts Toyota ATF WS
Drain plug torque: 28 N*m (21 ft.*lbf)
Overflow plug torque: 20 N*m (15 ft.*lbf)
Refill plug torque: 39 N*m (29 ft.*lbf)
***Service (drain) the fluid below 86 *F (i.e. cold)
Okay, I'm ready. Let's do this.
Step 1: Loosen the fill plug (24mm - WS is stamped in the middle of it) on passenger side of transmission near the drive shaft, you can remove it or leave it in finger tight for now. The rubber o-ring can be reused here - take care not to damage it.
I oringinally had trouble finding the fill port. Here I am on the passenger side, pointing the camera toward the driver side and back. (Note to self, if you just drove home from work, that exhaust pipe is hot. Ask me how I know.)
Step 2: Remove the drain plug (14mm) on the bottom of the transmission pan and be prepared to catch any fluid that comes out w/ your graduated bucket. Allow all fluid to come out, if your fluid is cold you should get about 3 quarts. You can rock the truck once it stops draining and get quite a bit more out, but this isn't necessary. Once the fluid has stopped draining, replace the 14mm plug w/ the new crush washer and tighten with torque wrench to 21 ft.*lb.
At this point you've drained about 3 qts, but take note of the precise amount you get.
Here I am draining the first ~3 quarts. Pretty dirty.
After draining the first ~3 quarts, I measured it using a graduated lemonade…I mean… automotive fluid container. Please don’t tell the wife.
Step 3: Remove the fill plug you loosened earlier - it's time to add an equal amount of new fluid that was removed from the drain plug. Route your oil pump hose into the fill hole and secure it. Pump in the proper amount. I added 3 qts. Once finished, remove the pump hose from the fill plug, you can leave the fill plug bolt out.
This is my original bottle pump. It took about 400 pumps for a quarts. I switched halfway through to another “transfer pump” I had laying around, and it took about 10 pumps per quart. That’s about 2 horus of my life I could have saved.
Step 4: Remove your skid plate if you have one. There are 4 bolts (12mm socket) securing it. This makes access for the next step substantially easier and will save you time.
Yes, sir.
Step 5: Locate the two ATF cooler lines on the passenger side of the transmission. You will see two lines close together running towards the front of the truck. The top line is the oil cooler outlet tube (fluid returns to the transmission in this line) and the bottom line is the oil cooler inlet tube (oil is pumped out of the transmission to the radiator or tow pkg cooler). You want the outlet tube (red) - trace this line the front of the truck to the point where the metal piping ends and the rubber hose is connected with a tube clamp. You’ll see 2 metal lines at the front of the truck just under the radiator and behind the frame. The top/forward most line is your return/outlet line. It eventually ends/connects to the bottom of your radiator or to your cooler. Disconnect the passenger side rubber hose (where red arrow is). The driver's side goes to the radiator(don't disconnect). Only a few drops came out when I disconnected it, so don't expect it to pour out and make a mess.
Well, I had some trouble following him here, especially with his pictures. He’s talking about inlets and outlets and I kept getting confused whether he was talking about the inlet or the outlet to the radiator or the cooler or the transmission. I spent a few minutes reading and rereading and finally focused on mentally calling the lines “send to cooler” or “return to transmission.” The idea here is that you want the “return to transmission” line just before it goes into the transmission (or a little upstream from there.” I found the “to transmission” line based on mountain lion’s original pictures, then traced that forward.
Tracing the cooler lines forward.
Here are the two metal tubes just under the radiator.
The passenger side inboard metal tube (On the left side of the picture, but note the one on the edge of the picture) is the one that feeds right back into the transmission (upper transmission fitting). This is where you are going to connect your rubber hose.
Loosen and slide this clamp down to free the connection between the hose and the piping. I needed to use pliers to *carefully* pull the hose off as it was stuck on there pretty good). Attach the 3/8 clear tubing to the metal pipe at the connection you just removed. You may need stretch the tubing out some on the end to get it on the metal pipe easier. once firmly attached, you can route the clear tube into your bucket (or use a clear jug with quart marks lined off - I opted to use this so I could see it filling easier).
Hooked up on the car side.
Step 6: With the tube routed into your bucket, you're ready to start the engine and allow the fluid to pump out into the bucket. It pumps out at about 1 qt every 7 seconds. I did this by myself, but had enough time to start the engine, get out and watch it fill. Do NOT rev the engine, just let it idle. I turned the engine off once ~2.5 qts had pumped out. Be sure not to allow more than 2-3 quarts to come out, you don't want the internal pump to run dry. You can also shift from Park through all the gears if you wish, though I'm not sure if it makes a difference. I did this once for the heck of it.
I did not shift through the gears, because at 7 seconds per quart, and a two quart container, I barely had enough time to start, look at the container, time the stop, then reach in and turn the car off.
Ready to pump!
That’s two quarts.
At this point you've flushed out over half the old fluid (~3 qts from the drain pan + another ~2.5 qts from cooler/rad lines). This will be your original fluid and should give you an idea of how dirty it is.
Step 7: Time to add more new fluid - reconnect your oil pumper to the fill hole and add in approximately what you removed in the previous step. Once the new fluid has been added, remove the pump hose again from the fill hole. Dump out the old fluid in your bucket/jug into a waste container or the empty qt. containers. It's time to repeat step 6.
You will do these two steps several times to your liking. I would recommend repeating these steps until you've added at least 9 qts (not including the original 3 from the pan [total 12]) - although you'll notice by the time you've done step 6 twice, the fluid coming out is considerably cleaner and much redder.
You could probably get away with only adding the original 3 qts and doing the steps above with 7-8 qts (total of 10-11 new qts) to save some $$ on fluid. I ended up using 14 qts total, and the last 2 qts that came out almost looked like new fluid...so a little bit of a waste and probably overkill w/ this much.
Be sure to save at least 1 quart of new fluid in case you need to add more during the check level process.
Step 8: Once you've flushed ~12 quarts or the amount of your satisfaction, remove the 3/8 clear tubing from the ATF cooler line. A few drops will come out of the metal end, but not much, so don't worry about it gushing out. Reconnect the original rubber oil cooler outlet line to the metal piping going back to the transmission and put the tube clamp back in place. Assure that the line is snug and firmly attached. Clean up any ATF that may have spilled.
Step 9: You might want to add about 1/3 qt extra when you're all finished so that you don't have to do the fluid check level more than once - just let the extra drain out to the right level. Replace the fill plug bolt to hand tight - you'll torque it down later, or if you're forgetful you can do it now (29 ft.*lb).
Anyway, I followed these isntructions, repeating many times. (3 quarts from the original drain and flush, then two more (total of 5), then two more (total of 7), then two more (total of 9), then two more (total of 11), then my last two quarts (total of 13)).
Step 10: At this point you should have approximately the correct amount of fluid in the AT and everything is reconnected. It's time to perform the fluid level check to ensure that the right amount of fluid is in the transmission. I will briefly go over this as a great write up has already been done by ForTech (
Discussion Topics - Tacoma World Forums ). Do NOT use an IR thermometer - the pan reading won't be anywhere close to the internal temperature.
Cliffs notes version, but I highly suggest reading ForTech's post:
Make sure you're parked on level ground,
Start truck, shift through all gears several times to get new fluid moved all around.
Using a small wire, jump pins 4 and 13 on the ODBII port.
I’m ashamed, I had to look up the location of the OBD II port. If I had just stuck my head futher under the dash (it’s just above the parking brake), I would have seen it.
Oh, I also had to look up the pinouts on wikipedia. You’ll see that the port is trapezoidal shaped. If the wider part of the part is on the bottom (for a female plug), the first pin starts on the bottom right, counts up toward the left, then starts at 10 again on the right side of the upper row, and increases toward the left. Clear as mud? Pins 4 and 13 ended up being the rightmost pins that actually had pins in them available in the port.
Start the truck, you should see a lot of your dash lights flashing.
From park, put truck in neutral for 2-3 seconds
Shift down to drive for ~1 second, enough for it to barely engage the gear then go back to neutral then back to drive after ~1 second. (repeat 3 times, total of 6 shifts).
Once back in neutral after 6th shift, you should see AT Temp in red light up for 2 seconds on the Tach face plate.
Shift back to park, you should see the AT temp light again for 2 seconds then go off. If you don't see this, you've messed up and need to do it again.
Flashing lights after jumping pins 4 and 13.
Let the truck idle until the AT temp light stays on. It's close when it starts flickering. It may take up to 20 minutes of idling to get to temp, especially in colder environments.
I only had to wait about 2 minutes to warm up.
A/T Oil Temp Light ON
Step 11: With the AT Temp light on and the truck still idling, remove the check plug(5mm hex). Be mindful of the Y-pipe / exhaust as it's hot and you will burn yourself if more than lightly touched. Also have your catch bucket ready. Hopefully you've added a little more than what's needed and fluid will come out. Allow fluid to drain until it's a light/thin trickle. Add your new crush washer to the bolt and replace the bolt torquing to spec (15 ft.*lb). Turn the engine the off.
Step 12: If you had a good bit of fluid come out and are now at the proper level, torque down the refill plug(24mm / 29 ft.*lb) if you did not do so in step 9. If you did not add enough fluid - ie nothing came out - replace the check bolt, turn off the engine and then add 1/3 to 1/2 qt more new fluid into the fill plug. Go through the steps in Step 10 to the get the AT Temp sense mode back on and check the fluid again as described in step 11.
Step 13: Replace your skid plate if you removed it from step 4.
Step 14: Double check all your connections and bolts - Clean up any spilled fluid on truck.
That's it.
I did those last few steps with no pictures, but they all went well. I got a slight dribble out of the check plug hole. Next time, I’ll probably go ahead and add another half quart just to be positive.
I took the 4Runner for a spin, and to quote someone else’s wife (I think)….”MAN, THIS THING SHIFTS LIKE BUTTER.”
(Coming up, Sea Foam!)
