Originally Posted By: Mackelroy
The tranny flush is about $200 , I took my wifes Rv4 with 120,000 miles to Firestone(vehicle ran fine), they wouldn't touch the tranny oil with that mileage. Then went to a Ammco(specialized tranny place), they wouldn't touch it either, said tranny was full of debri, said just run it, till death. That didn't really work for me, I might as well trade the vehicle.
Then I called Toyota to do it, and they said we might refuse it too.
Screw them all, and they actually did me a favor. I bought the oil, $30, drained, the oil was discolored, but there was no heavy fiber debri like Amsoil said. (they just didn't want to mess with it, cause they already had a rav 4 in the shop with tranny ecm issues.
The pan was super easy to drain, don't even have to jack the vehicle up, poured out the waste container, totally clean. I repeted this procedure 3 times over the next couple of weeks. Actually easier than changing the regular oil.
So all these shops saved me a lot of money, 30,000 miles later everything working fine, and I don't have to rid the vehicle.
Your method was fine, and both places did you a favor not touching it. Odds are they'd fill it with a cheap bulk fluid [especially AAmco] then tweak it with an additive. That's something shops in my area do, me I want the spec fluid going into my Jeeps.
Getting 100% of the old fluid out is just about impossible. Going forward I'd do a pan drop and filter change every 30K miles, if the vehicle sees lots of highway use you could stretch it out to 50K miles. I also like to back it up with an extraction or line exchange as well, but my vehicles see a lot of stop and go use.