Does anyone know why I couldn’t drain out the 3 quarts of automatic transmission fluid from my 2002 Accord and refill the reservoir by cranking the car and drain out another 3 quarts. In doing this I could change out 6 quarts of new fluid. The reason being is now most of the fluid is not Honda and I’m trying to get as much Honda transmission fluid back in as I can.

 

I suspect if you manage to get air in the torque converter that's asking for more trouble than you want.

 

Thanks, I guess that is reason enough not to do this. I'll stick with 3 quart change.

 

You only need to replace all the fluid if it's overheated or very old.

Search youtube "atomatic transmission" w/ that spelling for good procedure to emulate, if you really feel need to replace all the fluid.

good luck

 

The reason for a change was that I had to temporally put some Castrol transmission fluid in and it does not shift well.

Thanks for the reply

 

I would change out 3 quarts, then drive the car a day or so, then drain and fill 3 more quarts. Then see if things improve, or you need to do it again, with 3 more quarts.

 

Thanks, that's what I did and it seem to help. I'm going to drive it a short while and then change another 3 quarts.

Thank you all for the advice.

 

Well, I've been doing a bit of DIY maintenance on our new (to us) 1998 Accord LX sedan. There was no servicing whatsoever annotated in the owner's manual, but the compression was in the sweet spot for a new engine. The original owner was an old lady who said she kept up on the oil changes...the solid and even compression on all 4 cylinders and clean valve gear (looking through the oil fill with a flashlight) seemed to confirm this. The interior was immaculate. The Michelin Symmetry tires looked old, but had over 1/3 of tread remaining, with a code of "2304" on the side (manufactured 23rd week of 2004). I think she'd only changed the tires once in over 174,000 miles!

Changing the timing, accessory, power steering and balance shaft belts plus all tensioners were the first order of business, though everything looked new...but you can't tell with this stuff just by looking at it, so I installed the new stuff. It had an oil change right before we purchased it from the original owner, and I have some Mobil 1 5W30 and an AmSOil EaO20 filter waiting in the garage when it's time for that. I installed a Hayden 676 tranny cooler and Magnefine inline filter upstream of it, and started using it as our "in town car" for errands and groceries.

It was shifting just fine to begin with, but during our last snowstorm it did thump just a little going into reverse right after starting up, so I decided to drain the ATF.

Black. Pitch black ATF draining into the pan.

I mean, I didn't see any red, not even a hint of it. It didn't smell bad, but it looked awful. It looked like very thin waste crankcase oil that had not been changed in a long time. The drain pan had a bunch of "black silt" in it, which is the worn material from the frictions, steels and bearing surfaces in the tranny. I decided it would be best to do a bunch of drains & refills. I used spare ATF I had in my garage, since I wasn't going to keep it in this tranny for very long anyway.

I did the first and second refills with almost 6 quarts of Dexron III/Mercon generic Walmart (Sam's Club) ATF and about 3 oz. of LubeGard Black with each refill. Third drain-refill I did with 3 quarts of the same Dex/Merc and my remaining LubeGard Black (4 oz.). Fourth drain-refill was with 3 quarts of Valvoline MaxLife I had in the garage. Only drove about 10-15 very light miles on each of these drain-refill events, going through all the gears and torque converter lockup. The total amount of black silt from all four drains probably came out to a level teaspoon, if I had to guess just by looking at it.

Fifth drain-refill, and finally the waste ATF was red with none of the black silt in the drain pan, and a very, very light coating of material on the drain plug magnet. Filled it with ATF-Z1 this time (I have a couple cases of it from the good old days when it was cheap online at Maximum Auto Parts). Will do 3 more drain refills with the ATF-Z1 over the course of next week. It shifts a little smoother now, but again, it was shifting fine before I did this. I can say that if it didn't make that light, annoying thump upon shifting into reverse on freezing cold days, I don't think I would have drained the ATF in the first place.



I don't think the little old lady who owned it ever, ever, ever had the Honda dealer drain & refill the ATF. Over 174,000 miles, probably with minimal topping off, if at all. Yikes. I've only got about 2,000 miles or so on it since I installed the Magnefine in the rubber line leading to the Hayden ATF cooler, but I'll bet that inline filter is clogged. I'll probably change it during the course of the next 2 or 3 drain-refills with ATF-Z1.

Amazingly, the car still shifts fine.

OF

 

Thanks for the followup. Glad to hear things look promising.

regards

 

See post #1. I've done this on a number of cars and it works very well.

Automatic Transmission Fluid Flush - Corolland Forums