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well, earlier this week I got my tools and things and took a deep breath and flushed my tranny! it was sooo easy! easier than doing an oil change, I think. the only hassle was that I had to skitter back and forth from car to hood to check how much atf came out so I could turn engine off. it wasn't so bad because the atf really came out in a nice steady stream that filled 1qt in around 45 seconds, enough time for me to not really rush things. interestingly, it was not the 1-2qts in 25-30 seconds I was expecting. at first I did 2qts, then 1qt most of the time. I kinda took my sweet time and the best part was I treated my car with care while doing it! I even protected the dipstick in a clean white garbage bag so that it wouldn't touch any dirty area and collect dust and crap. now what shop would do that? after 4qts, I put the car in drive to flush out more atf from the torque conv. this I did while draining out 2qts. I know the faq says to stop around 9qts when atf should be coming out clean. but I did 12qts just for good measure. based on the bottles I collected, I flushed out approx. 12.25qts but only added approx. 11.50qts. the reason being is that the last indie shop that performed an atf flush seemed to have topped the atf to the very tip of the max, actually the very top of the plastic MIN/MAX marker. so the thought of having my tranny a tad overfilled always bugged me. also, it's been said that it's better to underfill than overfill. so anyhoo, after cleaning up and tightening things, I turned engine on and let it idle for 10 minutes. moved shifter through gears and then checked the dipstick using the COLD side. apparently the fresh atf was still "cool" I think that the level read at the MIN of the cold side. so today I let car idle for 5 minutes, then drove once around the block and let it idle a bit more on a level surface. so total engine running time was around 10 minutes. checked the dipstick using the COLD side per manual. level still reads at MIN. I'm thinking of adding the remaining approx. 0.50qt atf, but I'm afraid maybe the atf hasn't really warmed up to give an accurate reading and that I might overfill it. I've yet to drive for 30 minutes and check atf level using the HOT side. but I can't do that until I find exactly where my level is at. btw, the temp. here is pretty cool, at around 65 d.F.
I just wanna thank the board for the advice, tips, and support. it was kinda fun, actually! maybe next flush I will use synthetic. I used valvoline dexron III mercon, the MAX LIFE for cars over 75k.
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