flushing tranny .. advice needed

[tendency]

so can i just attach my ATF funnel, detach the lower tranny return line, start up the car and keep pouring ATF down my funnel till it runs clean out the bottom line? that's how i used to do it w/ volvo's and wondering if that'll do the trick w/ my camry too. thx-

[carsrus]

Yeah pretty much, I dont know how quickly the camry spits out tranny fluid bu it might be hard to keep up.

[peshwa]

The Tranny Fluid pump is pretty fast. It will quickly run out of fluid. So watch out. dont let bubbles form in your transparent tubing attached to the out line. I bought the $3 funnel at walmart (that red colored squarish funnel!) and keep pouring steadily and top off the funnel reservoir higher than rate at which its pumping out. That way you dont run the risk of the tranny fluid pump running dry ever and getting damaged.
All the best!

[fenixus]

can it really get damaged from running dry at idle? I mean it's not rolling anything while car is idling in Park/Neutral gear or is it?

anyways, camry's tranny spits the fluid out at a speed of about 1 quart per ~10 seconds (more or less), and the cheesy filler neck is so tight that it WILL take longer than 10 seconds for 1 quart of fluid to drain down the pan. you may need to shut off the ignition a few times and wait until fluid drains down to tranny from funnel, that's what I was doing while flushing.

[championmayday]

I need to do this soon, so no need in droping the pan? and how many quarts to do this?

[fenixus]

Originally Posted by championmayday

I need to do this soon, so no need in droping the pan? and how many quarts to do this?

if you don't plan on dropping the pan and replacing strainer then you could just do a few drain and refills in short intervals (e.g. every weekend).

best if you could drain it, drop the pan (clean it), replace the strainer, put all together with new gasket (use 1/4'' drive torque wrench on all bolts), refill and then flush it with like 10 qts. it would create a nice cleaning baseline.

otherwise (no pan dropping involved) a flush with 12qts of fluid will do some good and complete cleaning too.

plain drain and refill on 4cylinder model (A140E) is like 2.7qts transmission only (plus 1.7qts on separate differential).
plain drain and refill on 6cylinder model (A541E) is like 5qts and that is for transmission AND differential together (they have separate drain plugs, but once you loosen one both get drained pretty much).