cooked my tranny fluid.

Went to rausch creek this weekend and overheated my transmission and the fluid was black, shut it off and was pulled back to camp. I let it cool off and i drained it ( apparently only about half comes out due to the torque converter).

Threw in some cheap ATF and it appeared to shift fine and had no problems and the way home doing 70.

talking with some other xj guys they said it was a good idea to go cheap on the atf, as i should drain it and refill it when I got home. they said use royal purple ATF and get a tranny cooler. surprisingly, many guys didnt have a cooler either. I had never had a problem before, but it was kind of stupid not to have the $30 part. they also said to drop the pan and replace the filter when i drained it again.

My question is: should I get the old stuff fully flushed out at AMCO or something? I was doing some research and i read some stuff about flushes being bad if you have over 100k miles and have never had a flush. I have 156K miles.

And if I do get it flushed, can i give them the royal purple to put in?


Thanks for any help.

Your transmission fluid should be changed about every 30k miles, more often if you use it hard--heat shortens the fluids life.

Do not pay attention to those that tell you not to follow proper maintenance on the transmission--they won't be there when you have to replace/rebuild it.

Search "poor man's flush", and do it your self. First time use the cheapest fluid you can find, and use Dex III. As you had a real mess, you might want to do another "poor man's flush" after about 5000k miles.

found this!
POOR MANS FLUSH"
This will replace all of the fluid in the tranny.
1. Unhook tranny fluid cooler pressure line and put it into an empty gallon jug. (you might want to add about 2' of fuel tubing to this line so you can see it from the drivers door.)
2. Add 3' of fuel tubing to the nipple that the pressure lint came off of. (this will keep the line from dripping on the floor and also a backup incase you put the wrong one in the gallon jug.)
3.drain the fluid from the bottom of the tranny just like the spill & fill and replace the fluid with clean.
4.start the truck and let the gallon jug fill up, then shut off the truck.
measure the fluid in the jug and replace with the same amount of fresh fluid thru the filler tube.
5. empty the gallon jug.
6. repeat step 4. until clean fluid is seen in the gallon jug.
7. Put the lines back on the cooler.

Notes.
1. this will replace all of the fluid with fresh if you use 12-14 qts.
2. I used a gallon jug because 1 gallon = (Yup) 4 qts. easy math.
3. the fluid gets pumped out pretty quick. 3-5 seconds to fill a gallon jug.
4. no backpressure is generated so it is a good flush technique.
5. you can go to a better fluid (royal purple or amsoil) and get the clean fluid in.


but If I want the higher quality royal purple, how can i avoid buying 14 quarts of it? right now I am assuming I have about half burnt crud and half cheap atf mix right now.

couldnt I just run my tranny for like a minute to drain ALL the fluid out, I mean it wouldnt really by "dry" inside after a minute. Then fill her up with the purple stuff?

oh and any idea how i can tell the difference between the fluid output and input lines on my 2000 AW4?

I can just reconect those lines to my new stand alone tranny cooler correct? the fluid no longer has to go through the stock cooler built into the rad.

THANKS!

If you want the RP, I would wait until you have flushed it a couple times--would you want to add expensive fluid to crud? Also, the capacity of the entire system is about 12+ quarts including the torque converter, so you will have to buy that much anyway. I believe RP has an extended service interval, so there will be some savings there, but I sure as hell wouldn't add RP to crud. I would do one flush now, another in 5000k, them consider doing the RP after that.

Dropping the pan and replacing the "filter"--it is just a screen--wouldn't be a bad idea that way you can see if there is any metal in the pan.

cool man thanks alot for the advice, cant read stuff like that in a manual.

so check for a new "filter", and ill hold off on the purple until my fluid is already been flushed a couple times.

but i am still a little confused, I just did a "spill and fill method" used about 4.5 quarts of the cheap stuff. so should I buy 12 more quarts of the cheap stuff and do the poor mans flush buy continuing to drain and add 4 quarts at a time?

wait 5000 miles

Then poor man flush it AGAIN? .....THEN add some Royal purple.

sorry for all my questions, I just want to be sure of my course of action before I start buying stuff. And this problem really made me realize how little I know about trannys, so just trying to learn about em.

I mean, buying 24 bottles of cheap atf to clean my close call transmission and 12 more quarts of royal purple sounds alot better then installing a new trans!

how can i get the tranny so it has mostly RP in it?

When you get around to the RP, drop the pan and that will get you about 4, then poor mans flush for another 8 quarts, that way you will have mostly RP.

As you have already dropped the pan, just do 8 more quarts of the cheap fluid, run 5000k miles, then. depending on the condition of the fluid either another poor man's flush or straight to RP. Pretty much a judgment call for you to make.

really clear now, thanks alot for explaining that for me. none of my friends had any clue on flushing transmissions, now i can tell them :thumbup:

That's the way, always Pay it Forward!

Lots of info around here in numerous threads regarding cooler type, capacity, location, line connections and routing, fluid types, service, etc. This is where a little searching and a lot of reading saves you some headaches and money down the road.