Okay jkowtko I suppose that makes sense, flows better when warmed up so theoretically when drained more would drip out. Probably better to warm it up from the beginning then. thanks

 

Just remember, the fluid will get thinner as it gets hotter. So if you drain it while piping hot, watch out that it doesn't splash off the bottom of the drain pan and go all over the place. I made the mistake of doing a Toyota while at full temp and it created quite a mess ...!

And (whether there's any real truth to it or not), if you want to try to remove as much gunk as possible from inside your transmission, I suggest doing two drain/fills back to back, then do the last two after one week intervals so you can let the new fluid work it's way around the system, moving parts, etc. Worst case there's no advantage to waiting a week, but best case it will help clean out your tranny which should theoretically lead to longer life of all moving parts.

And ... looking back to your first post, 90k between tranny flushes? I thought it was 2yrs/24k. If your car has 200k miles on it, after you're done with this first set of flushes, I would suggest doing an annual drain-and-fill to keep that fluid as fresh as possible. $30/yr sounds a lot better than a $2500 tranny rebuild ...

 

Actually my plan was to do a total of three (not four) drain/fills. So maybe I'll do two drain/fills back to back, then do another one a week or so later. And thanks for the reminder/warning to be mindful of possibly rather hot fluid when draining.

 

Part of the reason is when it's hot the gunk is stirred up so more gunk drains out with the fluid. If it's cold, the gunk settles down & doesn't come out with the fluid.

When you say 2 back-to-back, you should at least circulate the fluid. I would drive around for 10 or 15 minutes then do the next drain/fill.

 

My plan is to do the first drain/fill right after driving around for 10 or 15 minutes, then do the second drain/fill and drive around again. Then wait a week or so and do the final drain/fill after doing normal driving around for that week.

 

I meant drive around in between the "back-to-back" drain/fills, to mix it into the torque converter. Otherwise you just drain out the new fluid you just put in.

 

Right. That's what I intend on doing. My "back-to-back refills" description probably isn't a good way to put it. But yeah the way I described in my last post is what I'll do, which is as I understand it is very typically the suggested method. Thanks.

 

Yes, I don't know where I came up with that 90K figure (wrong) in that post, but the owners/maintenance manual for the car actually says drain/refill every 30K miles or 2 yrs.

 

Update: I've now done two separate drain/refills, three quarts each. Drove around prior to each drain/refill to warm up the tranny fluid to help and loosen gunk, as has been described here. So my plan was to wait about a week after about a week of normal driving around and then do the third and final drain/refill of three quarts, as was the suggestion in post #22 here, in quotes below:

Well, I wouldn't mind just going ahead now and just driving around a little while again today and getting that third drain/refill done and out of the way instead of waiting a week. But I'm hoping to perhaps get another comment(s) on whether there really should be a definite advantage of waiting a week and then doing it, as was suggested and I was planning, or not bother waiting because it won't necessarily help that much to wait like that.

 

If you make sure you get the fluid well circulated through the transmission, by going through all gears a few times, including reverse, it would be fine to do all three the same day. That's just a lot of driving around, not going anywhere. Personally, I do one drain and fill every 15k miles, just to keep the fluid clean, so I will never need to do back to back fluid changes. It just seems like you're draining out the same fluid you just poured in, when you do back to back.