I wonder if you can find a cheap pump or syphon to stick down the fill tube to drain the tranny before dropping the pan to make less mess?

 

If you want to take the extra time, effort, expense, and cleanup, it can be done. It's a good idea to install a drain plug the first time the pan comes down. Until a drain plug is in, a large plastic garbage can lid upside down with a drain hole in it will catch the fluid easily.

 

It's not as bad as you'd think to drop the pan.

I used a small mortar pan from Home Depot (a trick from someone else here in f150) that fit's easily under the entire tranny.

Slightly loosen the front 3-4 bolts and leave them in. Loosen and remove the rest (in an order that give the pan even support) once you have the other blts out (you'll probably leave 1-2 of the rear bolts in to hold it until you're ready to drain) you'll gently let the pan fall from the rear and drain. As it drains you'll lift it to loosen the frint bolts a little more so it will fall even more draining even more. Until you're ready to drop the front bolts and hold the pan draining what's left and pulling it out.

You won't hurt the pan lip by letting the weight of the pan pull down on it either. Just go slow so you don't slosh any around all over the place.

Oh, you will get it on you, but it cleans up easy. Have a couple can's of cheap carb or parts claner around to clean up the pan, tool, floor etc.

 

wow thats wild! I was just doing this today . Seriously dropping the pan isn't too hard, the problem for me was I accidentally overfilled (apparently it didn't drain as much as I thought!) the transmission and didn't want to drop the whole pan again. Basically it took me over two hours and several mouthfuls of ATF to attempt to syphon enough out of it, tomorrow I'm going to go buy a liquid pump tomorrow and see if that can get it out. That stuff is thicker then you'd think when you were trying to syphon it .
It's easiest just ot drop the pan, you're goign to have to do it anyway to get to the filter!

 

I just had it sucked out and then pumped in at tire kindom,it work's great, and now my transmission shifts from 3rd to 4th without that shudder and vibration.$39.00 includind oil.They threw an additive in it and ran the oil threw the system a few times to make sure all the dirt came off the filter.The next time the pan comes off,and I will put a drain hole in it:
Joe


P.S >> How do you guy's get the image of your Truck on the bottom of your post.

 

You could drain and catch the fluid by removing the plug to the torque converter and refill. I tried to suck it out through the dipstick with a cheap bulb and plastic tubing and it didn't work.

 

If you want to do it a cheap and easy way why don't you just disconnect a hose from the tranny cooler. I have done this many times on my past vehicles and it never hurt them as I put many well over 150,000 miles on them with no trany problems. the only trick is to make sure you have the right line. Disconnect it and put it in a pail. start the engine and let it run till it stops pumping oil. Shut it off, put the line back and refill the tranny. this works great if you have overfilled.

 

I have a vacumn pump that I purchased to change the oil in a boat (inboard) it works great. I just put the hose down the tube and pump the pump to create a vacumn it takes 10 minutes cold probably 5 minutes hot. I use it on all the vehicles that I service.
It's a lot easier to drop a trans pan when it's empty of fluid.

 

No you can't. Removing the drain plug in the torque converter will only drain the torque converter. The pan will stay full.

Mark

 

Sure, that siphoning tube could save a little time and make less mess, but there is an important part of the fluid change that no one has addressed. Besides the paper filter needing to be changed, there is a magnet in the bottom of the pan to catch and help trap the majority of metal shavings and particles. You can not clean it off unless you drop the pan. And I can almost garauntee that the magnet will be very full of shavings!!! They always are.

So you could save some time by not dropping the pan and not changing the paper filter and not cleaning the magnet. But the time and mess saved doesn't compare to longer transmission life and performance!!!