Transmission shop near Yakima? (or Puyallup)
- Thread starter Cubey
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gnathv
Full Access Member
Watch the video again. He‘s putting the solvent in one line and it’s coming out the return line. He also says if it doesn’t flow there’s a blockage in the radiator. Most warranty require a magna fine filter installed. Put that in return line. I just don’t want to see you burn up your transmission prematurely.
Well, the hot side climbed to roughly 270-280 max in stop and go this afternoon, 260 on a steep bridge crossing into Longview, WA.
The fluid was a tad low (in the upper area of ADD), 12oz seems to have gotten it to the upper dot in the ADD area so that should be good now. Maybe 1-2oz more is all it needs. I use an old 1qt ATF bottle for measuring it out since it has easy to read marks on the side.
Kickdown definitely is working now, but needs a bit more adjusting so it kicks down a bit sooner than fully floored.
I went ahead and ordered a deep aluminum pan with a temp sensor bung:
and one of these Auto Meter gauges (a "like new" one for $6 less than full price)
I decided to do that since the existing cheap pan doesn't want to seal the drain properly, and I really want to see what the pan temp is, I figured it's worth the $280. The order total was enough to get 12 months no interest on the order, so at least I wont be totally flat busted broke. I'll swap them out when I get back down Nero's way in a couple weeks, when I go back to let the trans shop eyeball the trans. I might change the pan after they look at it, so they don't blame that for any issues it might have when I get back.
The fluid was a tad low (in the upper area of ADD), 12oz seems to have gotten it to the upper dot in the ADD area so that should be good now. Maybe 1-2oz more is all it needs. I use an old 1qt ATF bottle for measuring it out since it has easy to read marks on the side.
Kickdown definitely is working now, but needs a bit more adjusting so it kicks down a bit sooner than fully floored.
I went ahead and ordered a deep aluminum pan with a temp sensor bung:
and one of these Auto Meter gauges (a "like new" one for $6 less than full price)
I decided to do that since the existing cheap pan doesn't want to seal the drain properly, and I really want to see what the pan temp is, I figured it's worth the $280. The order total was enough to get 12 months no interest on the order, so at least I wont be totally flat busted broke. I'll swap them out when I get back down Nero's way in a couple weeks, when I go back to let the trans shop eyeball the trans. I might change the pan after they look at it, so they don't blame that for any issues it might have when I get back.
IDIBRONCO
IDIBRONCO
First off, I think you're reading your trans dipstick wrong. Even though it doesn't say it, that upper line is the full mark while I'm pretty sure that the hole above the word "add" is the actual add mark. It's kind of like the cross hatch area on the oil dipstick. There's an upper mark and a lower mark. The are in between is the safe area. It's not completely full, but it's still not low enough to have to add more. I know that someone will correct me if I'm wrong on that.
Second, the first time that I saw any of that spray cleaner was back in the late 90's. The guy it came from said worked at a trans shop and he said that they always use it when they R&R a transmission. The guy who showed it to me used it and still had bad luck. He was trying to get cheap transmission rebuild by having the guy who worked at that shop rebuild some for him on the side. The results of that totaled a 50% success rate so I didn't put a lot of faith in what he said. Maybe he swept the floors in that trans shop?
Third. Here's what we did at the diesel shop that I used to work at. If we had to replace an automatic transmission, we'd get a gallon of new parts cleaning solvent. We'd put half of the solvent in a coffee can. We'd run a 12v fuel pump (sacrificial, to only be used for that) in a rubber fuel hose with a cheap in line filter in front of the pump. Then we'd hook that rubber hose to one of the metal transmission lines and another hose from the other line back into the can. Blow the lines out the best that you can with air first. We'd run that pump for about 30 minutes. After that, we'd blow out the lines again, change the solvent in the can to the rest of the new, clean solvent, and switch the lines around to pump the solvent the other direction through the cooler for another 30 minutes. After that, blow the lines out as well as you can and add fluid. The shop foreman had his own repair shop for 15 years before going to work there. that was his method. He never had any issues after doing that and neither did we. Cubey, you could do this to only your radiator cooler if you wanted to. At least that would get it cleaned out. It would still probably be a good idea to install a cooler in the return transmission line.
Second, the first time that I saw any of that spray cleaner was back in the late 90's. The guy it came from said worked at a trans shop and he said that they always use it when they R&R a transmission. The guy who showed it to me used it and still had bad luck. He was trying to get cheap transmission rebuild by having the guy who worked at that shop rebuild some for him on the side. The results of that totaled a 50% success rate so I didn't put a lot of faith in what he said. Maybe he swept the floors in that trans shop?
Third. Here's what we did at the diesel shop that I used to work at. If we had to replace an automatic transmission, we'd get a gallon of new parts cleaning solvent. We'd put half of the solvent in a coffee can. We'd run a 12v fuel pump (sacrificial, to only be used for that) in a rubber fuel hose with a cheap in line filter in front of the pump. Then we'd hook that rubber hose to one of the metal transmission lines and another hose from the other line back into the can. Blow the lines out the best that you can with air first. We'd run that pump for about 30 minutes. After that, we'd blow out the lines again, change the solvent in the can to the rest of the new, clean solvent, and switch the lines around to pump the solvent the other direction through the cooler for another 30 minutes. After that, blow the lines out as well as you can and add fluid. The shop foreman had his own repair shop for 15 years before going to work there. that was his method. He never had any issues after doing that and neither did we. Cubey, you could do this to only your radiator cooler if you wanted to. At least that would get it cleaned out. It would still probably be a good idea to install a cooler in the return transmission line.
I'll let the dipstick speak for itself:
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Ignore the reading on the stick, the engine was off and I didn't wipe it first. I filled it to the far right dot, to the left of the arrow area.
Yeah that stuff seemed questionable.
I'm still slowly calling around to trans shops further on my route to see if I can find one that's willing to flush it properly. Failing that, I'll see about doing something like that, I reckon.
Jesus Freak
Full Access Member
Oh, Cubey can read a dipstick. I wouldn't challenge him on that. But you could totally flush it yourself, the problem is.... liability. If you flush it and hook it up and the transmission fails the shop and their lawyers will say, "YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE WARRANTY!!!!" Even if it's obviously their fault. But if it fails because you DIDN'T hook up the radiator tranny cooler, then the shop and their lawyers will say, "you have violated the warrenty!" even though they're obviously dodo birds. Ughh, the life of a full time RVer! Especially one who drives an antique vehicle, you the man Cubey, you the man...
Well, the thing is.... I have a dash cam. It was on when I was talking to the guy about the radiator and the cooler. You can hear what he says about the radiator bypass, and why he didn't want to flush it (the excuses). He wasn't visible in the shot but it has a timestamp and you can see him walking up and away.
Would it be admissible? Probably not due to the crappy "two party consent" state law for audio recordings. But maybe it would be enough to get him to play ball, before it gets that far?
So, I'm gonna leave it as-is and see how things go, I guess. I did fix the kickdown adjustment, it's working now, so that can't be an excuse. Might get the radiator flushed and just leave it bypassed until after I go back and have them look it over, then tie it back in myself afterwards.
I mean, if something goes wrong once I get far away, I'll end up just taking it to a shop elsewhere to see what the problem is, because I can't hang around up here forever.
Oh and the fluid hasn't gotten dark any, so maybe it's fine?
I think we'll know better once I go back, have them eyeball it or whatever they wanna do, have then sign off on it being fine. Then I'll go drop the pan, replace it with the aluminum one, install the second temp gauge, refill+2qts for the deep pan, and be on my way. And hopefully I can figure out a place to install that spin on filter too. Having a pan reading plus hot line should give me a very good idea of how it's doing. Maybe that's overkill, but I won't be able to complain that I don't know what the ATF temperature is, that's for sure.
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Jesus Freak
Full Access Member
Like I said, you the man, Cubey! And DANG! A dash cam too!
Technically, it's an older, higher quality Chinese action cam (sj5000x) but it has a dash cam mode, where it powers up when USB power is connected and turns off when USB power is disconnected. My old, super cheap dash cams have crapped out on me and I already had the action cam, so I switched to using it.
A screenshot from it, when the shop owner was riding along:
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Jesus Freak
Full Access Member
So we can get a video of the shop guy, but not you and Nero doing the tranny to Cheers?
Well the dash cam was on when I went to the shop. It wasn't on when doing the trans since it sat there parked for a week without the trans even in it. Then it sat there several more days before the cooler and all were finished up so it could be driven.
Oh and here, this might clarify things better. This is from my Chilton E-series book. Step #4 talks about the add/full marks. The writing on their example dipstick is slightly different, but it has the same 3 marks/dots. The upper most mark is considered "full" at full operating temperature. On mine, it has the arrow area which is a safe zone above "full" in case it expands further, but technically the upper most dot is "full". Why they couldn't make it easier to understand, I dunno.
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It might still be there. I didn't look that far back.
On the subject of displaying temps on the hot side, I found a thread on another forum on the subject, where one user said:
"the way i look at it, i dont really care how hot the fluid is coming out of the trans, it is what it is and will be whatever it is. If it is coming out of the converter at 280* up a hill, there isnt much i can do about it, it is what it is. but if the coolers can bring that 280 down to 160, then you have done all you can to scrub the heat.
once your coolers are heat soaked beyond capacity, they can no longer shed the heat and your trans is doomed to a heat problem. doesn't matter at that point what the input is.
other than always seeing my trans temp gauge at an unexciting 100*, it is kind of nice knowing that the coolers are removing nearly all the heat. could be 230 going in, dont matter cauz it is 100 coming out, cant do anything more to help it."
Well that makes sense as to why people say to install the temp sensor in the pan or the return line. Good thing you've got that other pan coming with the second gauge. You'll be able to get a good delta temperature off the two gauges.
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