Dealer says 07 Highlander has strainer. Nope!

[mrdctaylor]

I've never dropped the pan on my Tacoma. 210K miles and counting. I've never dropped it on the Hyundai Santa Fe either and it has about the same mileage. I just do drains/fills every 30K miles on each. No issues whatsoever yet. Then again, they might do 200K miles without even a fluid change, so who knows if I'm actually helping anything or not. Regardless, changing the filter is a fair amount of work for little return on many vehicles. The only time I've actually done this was on my daughter's Trailblazer where I knew it had never even had a fluid change when she got it at 150K miles. I went ahead and dropped it and the filter looked fine. It was probably unnecessary.

 

[brslds]

Just wanted to add and support clarification on the 2GRFE which is this engines transmission in my vehicle has a filter. So the general blanket statements about the screen is incorrect.

 

[The Critic]

The Toyota Transmission Filter (called oil strainer) and pan gasket for the U660 can be quite expensive. The filter stickers for $96.68 and the oil pan gasket (thank goodness it does not use RTV) stickers for $14.25. In the ideal work, a filter replacement + flush is good preventive maintenance, but the parts pricing may make this uneconomical for most applications. Since the fluid does not even need to be changed (technically), just a fluid replacement puts you ahead of the game.