conflicting answers about doing a tranny flush.

[Wrinkledpants]

Originally Posted by shenrie

^^^ya, the same guy whos telling me not to hook it up to a pump does a lot of service work on vw/audis that have "non serviceable" trannys. he has a way to change fluids in them. says its a pita, but personally, id want new fluids at least once and a while, lol.

I own Porsche's and Audi's. They all have drain and fill plugs. The dual clutch trannies have a 40K service interval. Torque converters are considered "life" but are typically listed between 140 and 160K miles.

I don't think flushes do much. If those deposits aren't getting stirred up with normal flow, a flush isn't likely going to disturb it.

Drop the pain, wipe out the sludge, clean off the magnets, change the filter, refill, drive for a week. Drain and refill (no pan drop needed). You should be good to go.

It's far better to increase the trans fluid change interval than to wait until you're developing sludge.

I like a 40-60K mile change interval for all driveline fluids.

[Stumpalump]

The problem with the Fords is the torque converter. A worn converter generates the heat that kills the rest of the tranny. Pulling a load at high RPM up a grade kills the converter but what's worse is engine breaking long grades at high RPM. The trick is to to go up and down easy. I have the same tranny as the OP. I climb the mountain grades on the hiway at under 40 mph in second gear and going down I keep it the same speed as I climb. Use the breaks to keep the RPM in check. Faster than that spikes the temp even with a cooler. Flush it at 30k for $129 bucks at quickie change places. That gets all the trail dust out of the fluid. A pan service with filter change is done when the pan gasket leaks.

[JoeH]

I'm not a fan of the flush either. Drop and drain. For those of you with a 5R110 Torqueshift consider upgrading to the bigger 6.4 5R110W pan and bigger filter. Plug and play.

edit to add: it's worth noting that drain and fill only exchanges ~half of the 18 quart capacity in the TorqShift transmission. Another drain and fill with the next two oil changes and you're close a full fluid swap.

[VOODOO7.3]

Here's a link to correct ATF change in the 4R100 transmission:
http://www.ford-trucks.com/article/i...nsmission.html

Also note that the OP's 2003 as well as all 2002's came stock with an upgraded triple disc torque converter. I agree with carringb on the Magnefine filters. Change it once per year. I use Mobil 1 ATF every 60,000 mi. and ALWAYS use the biggest single cooler possible-never 2 separate coolers.

[Gtbensley]

I drain and filled mine and replaced the filter at the same time. I then disconnected a tranny cooler line and used the vans pump to pump old fluid out and new stuff from a bucket in. Worked well, was easy and did not actually flush it.

[E-rex]

I ended up wussing out on this..

When I got the van, the tranny fluid was so low that it did not even register on the dipstick. I have been going back and forth between doing a pan drop & filter, and a full change / flush. Engaging drive from park was a bit sloppy, but then I ran into a problem where it took about 15 seconds to engage in reverse. That made me too uncomfortable, so I decided not to wait. I ordered 12 qts of Motorcraft Mercon V (just over $6/qt on Amazon) and a filter, and dropped the pan. The orig owner swore he had the fluid changed, but the yellow dipstick plug was in the pan, so his assurances are suspect..

The good part was that the fluid did not look / smell bad. Deep red, even a little translucent, and no burnt smell. Nothing really scary in the pan, just a bit of sludgy crap on the magnet. 90k on the vehicle, so I cleaned the pan, swapped the filter, put it all back together and filled it. Figuring I am good for now, and in mebbe 30k I can do a complete flush and fluid change.

Gears engage much better now, shifting is much crisper. This was not difficult at all. Lots of little sub-projects going on, but primarily focusing on the cleanout now. Almost done with that, but few stubborn / troublesome cleaning tasks remain.. inside the doors (bare cargo van) are still nasty / greasy, so cleaning them out is going to be fun. Debating removing the doors to do it right, not just drive all the crap to the bottom..

[Bbasso]

I tend to do the drop n drain w/ filter every 50K yet to see anything negative.
But I do have a trans cooler which shaves off 15-20deg on average, hopefully prolonging the life...

[Mr.Anderson]

Originally Posted by boywonder

I did my 4R75E trans with about 95K using the bucket method.....super easy with 2 people.

Buy about 16 quarts of juice......disconnect one of the lines at the trans cooler......put another short piece of tubing on the cooler when you removed the van line...point both pieces of tubing into a 5 gallon bucket and crank the engine briefly.

This will let you know what line is the output (fluid coming out of line going into bucket).

Person 1 starts the engine...person 2 monitors flow into bucket.......shut off engine when 5-6 quarts of waste fluid are in the bucket......add 5-6 qts new fluid through the dipstick tube.

Repeat above a few times until waste fluid flowing into bucket looks like fresh new fluid.

Reconnect trans line to cooler...done.

I'm tempted to go this route, seems easy, does a better job of replacing the fluid than just dropping the pan. A super obnoxious sham WOW type salesman guy did a good youtube video on the process on his truck:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgVFvssMY4g

When watching make sure to turn volume down and increase play speed to 1.5x LOL

[JWA]

Originally Posted by Mr.Anderson

I'm tempted to go this route, seems easy, does a better job of replacing the fluid than just dropping the pan. A super obnoxious sham WOW type salesman guy did a good youtube video on the process on his truck.

That's a decent video of the one-person process---I followed much the same method when doing this on two different 4R70W's in vans, one with 211K miles (2003) and another with 275K miles at time of flush. I followed this procedure authored by Mr Mark Kovalsky who posts regularly on FTE. FWIW he's a former Ford transmission engineer so his word tends to be gospel in my world.

https://www.ford-trucks.com/articles...-transmission/

Mark K does mention its okay to change the filter at the time this is to be done. Changing it before the exchange is done is desirable as you're starting with a clean pan and new filter. Theoretically if any debris is flushed out it will be caught by the filter. He also states the filter does NOT have to changed ever again, that it was designed for the life of the transmission---typically 300K + miles.

Those who've created the myths this causes transmission problem are full of it---Mark mentioned this will not cause a transmission to fail---its similar to changing motor oil. IF transmission issues were discovered after this flush its simply co-incidental OR the process wasn't done correctly.

FWIW both vans now have over 285K miles on each, not a single issue wither either transmission.

HTH