Drain &Fill Transmission Fluid Change Question

[jonathandlee1]

Hell All,

I am new to this forum as well as new to owning a Lexus.

I have an 09 Lexus ES 350 and I did a drain and fill on my transmission fluid. I am just checking to see if I did it correctly as I have read other people do it differently.

Steps:

(Made sure car was level first)

1. I loosened the 24 mm fill plug. Then I removed the drain plug and got right under 4 qts of fluid removed (once I removed the overflow tube, it was exactly about 4 quarts that came out)

2. I screwed the overflow tube back in then the drain plug finger tight.

3. I then put 4 quarts back in through where the fill plug was. I tightened the bolt down to torque specs.

4. I then started the car and waited until the transmission fluid reached about 104 degrees fahrenheit. During that time of waiting, I cycled through all gears (Park, Neutral, Reverse, etc).

5. I then unscrewed the drain plug once the temperature was in the optimal range and let it drain until it first started to "trickle" then immediately screwed the drain plug back and torqued it to spec.

 

6. I noticed that right under 2.5 quarts came out right before the trickle.

Did I do everything right? Mind you, I was not trying to do a flush.

 

Thanks for your input!

[DSES350]

Thanks for sharing the steps. From what I’ve read and seen in youtube videos, this looks good to me. Never done it though. Are the gears shifting well ? any slipping of gears ? This is on my list too, but have not found the courage to do it myself. 

[jonathandlee1]

@DSS everything is shifting fine so far. I think next time, I'm going to try using the Valvoline maxlife ATF. I've used that in my previous old Camry and it shifted better than the OEM ATF.

Lexus tried to charge me over $500 just to do this service so I decided to do it myself.

[RX400h]

I'm a bit confused. You drained 4 quarts, added 4 quarts, then drained 2.5 quarts. Is that right? Wouldn't that mean you were left with only 1.5 quarts?

[jonathandlee1]

1 hour ago, RX400h said:

I'm a bit confused. You drained 4 quarts, added 4 quarts, then drained 2.5 quarts. Is that right? Wouldn't that mean you were left with only 1.5 quarts?

Yea. I think the transmission was initially overfilled. All the videos I saw typically only had 2.5 quarts removed initially. I'm not sure what most had removed once drained the second time.

That's part of the reason why I asked this question on this forum to see if I did it right. I did everything the videos said to do. It didn't start to trickle until that much fluid came out which from what I saw/hear is the indicator to when the fluid is level with the overflow tube.

[RX400h]

23 hours ago, jonathandlee1 said:

Yea. I think the transmission was initially overfilled. All the videos I saw typically only had 2.5 quarts removed initially. I'm not sure what most had removed once drained the second time.

That's part of the reason why I asked this question on this forum to see if I did it right. I did everything the videos said to do. It didn't start to trickle until that much fluid came out which from what I saw/hear is the indicator to when the fluid is level with the overflow tube.

I guess I never need to worry about that because I always changed my own transmission fluid. Late model vehicles are often "filled for life", on my 2024 Supra, that I'm not worried about it. I do change my manual transmission fluid in my Miata, although it has less than 70,000 miles on it at this time.