I don't think running the engine with a half drained tranny is a very good idea.
When you drain the pan you'll get about 4 quarts of fluid out. The lazy method: Drain the pan, refill with Mobil 1, drive around a bit, drain again, and refill. (this is what I did)
Otherwise, instructions how to flush, swiped from the mailing list:
Disclaimer: I changed the fluid in my transmission without incident, YMMV.
If you stand at the front of the car, on the left side of the radiator there are two fittings for the transcooler. The fitting that is at the top is the line coming off the transmission, so by disconnecting here and extending with a hose, the transmission fluid can be drained into a bucket while the car idles in neutral. At the same time new ATF is added into the dipstick tube by means of a long skinny funnel at about the same rate as the fluid drains.
Materials needed:
-bucket marked in two quart intervals
-funnel with a long skinny end that will reach and fit into the dipstick tube
-about 3 feet of 1/2" OD flexible hose (I used vinyl)
-17mm open end wrench
-11 to 16 quarts of ATF of your choice
I pulled the cover off the power distribution box so that I could pull the fuel pump relay if I needed to shut things down quickly. The fuel pump relay is the middle t-shaped relay above the row of 4 fuses. If you have help, then you don't need to bother. The fitting in the radiator is 17mm, so unthread this and pull the line out of the radiator. If you pull up and over while wiggling, you can move the line next to the radiator where there is a little bit more room to work in. The hardest part of the whole thing is getting the hose onto the tubing flare so that it is fairly secure and not kinked against the front of the engine bay. I used cheap clear vinyl tubing from the hardware store when the rubber hose I had purchased turned out to be too rigid.
For my 95, I passed the hose over and behind the headlight assembly and put the hose on the transmission line behind the headlight, hooking the flare to a lip on the back of the plastic headlight housing. I don't know if this would work on the newer headlights. I also put a plastic wire tie around the hose behind the fitting just in case so I didn't baptize my car and driveway in ATF. Like I said this is the most difficult part, I also considered making a funnel out of a 20 oz pop bottle by cutting a hole at the bottom side of the bottle, hanging the bottle upside down from the trans line with a hose at the mouth of the bottle to direct the ATF down beneath the car. This would certainly work, but would need a low profile container like a huge oil pan to catch the outflow. Just an idea if you get frustrated trying to get the hose on the line.
Once the hose was on the trans line, I just dropped the end into my marked bucket. Pull the trans dipstick out and put the funnel down into the dipstick tube. I opened all my ATF bottles, which in my case was a 5 quart size jug of petroleum Mercon and 11 quarts of Mobil 1 ATF. Once this is done, everything is ready. Block the wheels, put the e-brake on, and place the shifter into neutral and then start the car. Go back around to the front of the car and start pouring in ATF at about the same rate as it is coming out. I started pouring petroleum Mercon after the first quart was already out and tried to stay about 1 quart behind. After
the first 5 quarts were in, I started pouring the
Mobil 1.
The capacity of the transmission is 10.3 quarts, and I wanted the first 5 quarts to be a flush, I stopped the engine after 16 quarts were out. At this point I had poured a bit over 14 quarts in, so I added another bottle of ATF and put everything back together. After running the car a bit, the dipstick said I was low and it took another 1.5 quarts to get just below the max line.
The extra ATF used to flush is probably not necessary, but I wanted to try and get the old stuff out.
David Jewett/MI
95SE/ATX, SVT Induction kit, Vuncannon False Alarm, resonatorless, badgeless, hood liner removed Coming Soon! Leda Suspension Kit
