Auto Tranmission service on the 4runner

Hi,
I have been reading the manual and service book.
when do you guys do the automatic transmission oil change??
Maybe you guys can tell me on where I can find it in the book.

My 09 tacoma is life but I did a drain and fill a while back .

thank you

 

Yeah, this "lifetime" oil is a crock of shit.

I did a tranny flush myself on my 07' FJ at 60k miles. Blacker than the Ace of Spades. Even though I didn't really have any issues with shifting etc, the tranny shifted better/firmer after the oil change. And not difficult to change.

 

I did fluid replacement last year (about 12 qts) on 08 4Runner V8 (112K), 2005 Tundra(68K), 2015 4Runner(118K) and 2010 Tacoma (118k). The Tacoma had been shaking during shifts at normal acceleration. Didn't shake after fluid change. I would do it around the 100K mark. It's really pretty easy to do especially if you have a tranny cooler.

 

Beware of replacing all the oil on a high mileage tranny. If you're having trouble with it, then nothing to lose. But replacing the original oil on a high mileage tranny can actually cause slippage. Documented fact and back up by the technical VP of Aamco who has over 30 yrs of experience working on trannies.

 

Theres a difference between a fluid flush n a fluid exchange....im sure Aamco does a fluid flush under pressure which in return has a greater chance of loosening up debris n such in tranny.
No pressure involved in exchange....ur basically just replacing the the fluid...after all it takes 7-10 sec. for a quart of tranny fluid to be pumped out by using the tranny pump to do so....

 

Drain and fill, change oil filter and done. I plan on doing mine at 60k along with the front and rear diff as I off-road mine quite a bit, otherwise if I didn’t I’d wait until 100k unless I noticed a change in transmission function.

 

I'll do mine around 100k.

For those who question maintenance practices and how often things need to be done, I thought this was a cool little anecdote. This person just hit 250k miles on their 5th gen with 10k oil changes, 1 tranny oil change, 1 transfer case oil change, 2 diff oil changes.......and still going strong. Oh yeah, they use it off-road too

 

what about spark plugs change??

so there is no real interval from toyota with the 4runner with the Transmission fluid change??

 

Toyota claims the transmission is a lifetime oil unless you use it in severe conditions (lots of heavy towing, lots of hard off-roading, extreme weather).

Many people are uncomfortable with the thought of never changing it.

Some people change it every 15,000 miles. Some probably don't change it at all.

The fact remains that these transmissions are quite robust with very few instances of failure.

Change the trans oil whenever you feel comfortable. For me, it'll be 100k.

I'll be doing spark plugs around 100k as well.

 

I was looking in the engine and i saw these air injector pumps that's on top of the coil pack... what a pain in the ass.

 

there is a block off kit, and a harness to take the air pump out and not have a check engine light.

 

this is new vehicle for my wife... I assume the air pump pushing more air into the engine for efficiency??

 

The air pump pushes more air into the exhaust to help the catalytic converters get up to temp faster.

 

I dont know all the technical details. forgive me if I have stupid question... I know the catalytic converters lower the emission, so warming it faster helps reducing the emission quicker as well?

 

Internal combustion engines are inherently inefficient, you will always have HC and CO (unburnt and partially burnt fuel) in the exhaust leaving the engine. There’s a chemical reaction in the cat that burns up those molecules but it doesn’t work very well when the cat is cold. During cold start the engine runs rich so there’s extra fuel going in, this is why cars smell worse at cold start then why driving. Lean mixtures always burn hotter so pumping fresh air into the cat while it first starts trying to burn up fuel molecules causes it to get hotter faster and in turn makes it cleaner.

 

wow I learned something new today... thank you

 

Quick question related to this system.... is the air pump thingy in the front passenger corner of the engine bay supposed to make a mechanical “wind up” noise when the engine is shut off? It’s quite the mechanical sound that was kind of surprising the first time I heard it. Just want to make sure it’s normal.

 

Air injector pump removal and spark plug change tutorials: