Question Transmission flush - only 10 qts came out?

[NASCAR Mike]

My 05 Excursion hit the 30k mile mark and I thought it was a good idea to change the transmission fluid.

I looked online and saw that the Torqueshift hold 22 qts of Mercon SP. I bought two cases at my Ford dealer along with a frame mounted trans filter and the pan trans filter.

I drained the pan and removed both filters. I blew air into the lines to get out as much of the fluid as I could. I was unable to drain the torque converter but I was thought that blowing air ino the lines would help displace it.

I added 7 quarts of trans fluid and started truck, moved shifter into R and D a few times and recheck fluid.

After a 30 minute drive I check fluid and ultimately I only needed to add 10 quarts total.

Does the trans really hold 22 quarts? My chilton book says 17.5 quarts.

Is replacing 10 quarts enough?

 

[sbiggi]

There is no way you'll get all the old stuff out with gravity or blowing air in.

You need to hook it up to a machine that collects the old fluid and pumps in new fluid in order to fully flush the transmission. If the fluid doesnt look or smell burnt any more, then you should be just fine the way you did it.

 

[TexasA&M]

The way you did it is not bad, but it definitely didn't get all the fluid out.

There is no reason to need a machine either... your tranny has a pump. It's quite simple... just remove the hoses off of the tranny cooler, put them in a bucket to drain. Fire her up and the tranny will start pumping fluid out into the pan. Add fluid into the tranny at the same rate it's coming out until you've either added enough to fill the entire tranny (22qts), or the color changes significantly (meaning that you're pumping out new fluid). I would run a couple of extra quarts through just to be safe.

Here's a more detailed write up -

http://www.amsoil.com/lit/g3000/2008/sections/amsoiltransmissionfluidprocedures.pdf

 

[Bolt]

There are some that will tell you that there's a valve in the tranny that doesn't let the cold fluid circulate through the cooler, so you need warmed up fluid to be able to run it all in and out through the cooler lines. Otherwise the valve will close when the cold new fluid hits it and start mixing with the old fluid in the system. They say the dealers have a heated flushing machine. I don't know any of this first hand, but thats what I've heard on more than one occasion.

 

[DaveBen]

According to Ford's DVD, there is NO valve in the cooling section of the tranny. There is no reason to to keep hot tranny separated from cool fluid. We all have coolers to keep the tranny in good operating ranges.

Dave