hi all, I am looking at changing my tranny filter. 1st timer. Not any speciel reason ,just got 118,000 miles on it. Only had the truck a year now.What I was wondering is how much fluid will I lose? That way I have the correct size drainge pan. And is there any thing I should look for. And any tricks that will help, or any insite will be grateful. 1995 f-250 , 4x4, 351, automatic. thanks all

 

You will need a big drain pan. Most truck trannies hold something like 15 quarts more or less. BUT, only about half will come out when you drop the pan. The other half is stuck in the torque converter, cooler, internal passages all of which can be drained too. Lazy man way is just dump the pan.

I use a large maybe 10-12 quart pan to drain mine. If I go for what's in the converter etc, I dump the pan before I go for the rest. A wide pan is better than just a big but tall one. You want surface area to catch any mess.

Have a bag of kitty litter handy, it is good to soak up spills.

Loosen all the pan bolts a little and then loosen the ones on two sides of one coner a lot or completely. You want to have the pan drop only one corner(Unless you have a pan drain plug) to act like a funnel and pour the oil out that corner. Before you finally drop the corner, loosen the other bolts a bit more and then separate the loose corner of the pan from the tranny and get ready for a lot of oil to pour out fast. Once the gusher stops you can start removing the bolts further away from the corner and slowly lower the corner more and more til it is empty enough to remove.

If you do mostly street driving, it may be a good time to consider putting in a drain pan bolt. B&M makes a handy one. It even goes into the indentation in the pan that was on my 94 E4OD tranny. Make sure before you drill that you check the inside of the tranny where the bolt will stick up into. You don't want any interference of the drain plug with tranny innards. Since my E4OD had the indentation already, it was a pretty safe bet Ford designed it to be a good fit but save the $5 by not putting in the drain. The negative to the drain plug is that it can catch on things and rip out of the pan. That is why I said street driving.

Assuming you have drained the pan, it is wise to drain the converter and maybe blow out the lines to the cooler with compressed air. The converter usually has a drain plug on the bottom. A lot of fluid will come out of the converter, for a long time.

I like to GENTLY check any bolts I see on the underside of the valve body to make sure they are not loose. Usually you are working with aluminum so you don't want to do a King Kong on the bolts. If you have an inch pound torque wrench and the specs, so much the better.

besure when you remove and replace the filter that you don't damage the rubber seal. It is often deep inside a cavity of the valve body. You might need a pick to dig it out. Or if it is in good shape I often leave it in since there is a risk that you might scratch things up digging the old one out.

Check the pan for debris. Normal is some pepper flake type stuff maybe a teaspoon. Not so good is metal chunks bigger than say a grain of rice or more than a couple. A low of fine silver flakes is bad. There is probably a pan magnet. It will be covered with a fuzzy coat of metal slivers, that is normal. BTW, usually the magnet sits around the indetation where the drain plug will fit.

Check the fluid for color and smell. Black or brown is not so good. Red is good pink is usually old. A burnt smell is bad. Chemically smell is good. Your tranny has a lot of miles so who knows what you may find.

Clean the inside of the pan with something like a brake cleaner or WD 40 or some other solvent. Clean the gasket surfaces with brake cleaner or some other NON OIL BASED SOLVENT, you want the surfaces of the pan and the tranny to be clean and free of old gasket, sealer oil etc.

Some trannies use RTV or some other gasket in a tube. Others use a cork, rubber or composite gasket and may or may not use sealer. I prefer the composite gaskets, kind of like hard thin cardboard. The rubber gaskets and corks have a tendency to squeeze out as you torque the pan back in place and then you got major leaks.

I like to use Permatex gasket sealer with my gaskets. Follow directions. I find "gluing" the gasket to the pan makes it easier to hold it in place as I put the pan back in. I like to make sure the pan gasket is dry in place before putting the pan back up on the tranny.

Either use an inch pound torque wrench or a light hand tight pressure to torque up the bolts. You don't want to over torque the bolts. You will either strip the threads or as mentioned the gaskets may squeeze out, what PITA.

I usually put about half the ATF into the pan and start it up for a few seconds then sut down. I add some more fluid and start and shut down and again til I am about 80% of the fluid I think I need. Then I do the fluid level check as described in the manual. then I top up as needed. During the week I check and top up also, since bubbles may work out of the system.

This in general is what to do. There are a lot of variations and "better" methods.

Good Luck,

Jim Henderson

 

Thanks for the info Jim, I probably would have made quite a mess. I did not see a indentation for a plug, so since all I do is street driving and some plowing on occasion I guess I should be ok, Thanks again Bob

 

Here's another way to do it:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/article/...nsmission.html

 

I did mine yesterday for first time and like they said ..Only about 1/2 came out about 8 qts...I actually put too much back in and had to drain some...Get something under the truck because I made alittle mess too..On my newly coated blacktop...When you pull the filter..it comes out too...Just have enough ground coverage