brubenstein

Checked the tranny fluid on my 90GXE today and the fluid was not bright red. (Big surprise on a 10 year old car, even with low miles.) So I tried something I had read elsewhere on changing tranny fluid. Goes like this:

Pull the return line from the transmission cooler where it connects to the transmission. (This is pretty easy to get to on a 3rd gen from under the hood.)

Place the end of the hose in a drain pan. (There is enough slack and room to do this without pulling any shrouds.)

Get a funnel and bottle of transmission fluid ready.

Start the car. The pump in the transmission will pump the old fluid out of the transmission, through the cooler and into the drain pan. Start pouring fresh fluid into the transmission through the dip stick tube.
Note: The pump in the transmission will pump fluid out of the transmission than gravity can feed the new fluid in. So don't try to do all the fluid in one shot. Shut the car off after every few quarts and refill the transmission. It doesn't matter if the fluid gets a bit low while doing this since the car is not in gear, or moving.

Keep doing this until the fluid coming out is clean. (I only had 5 quarts of fluid so I didn't flush all of it, but didn't notice any mixing of new fluid after the 5 quarts. I the spring I'll be putting on a transmission cooler, and will do a complete flush and refill with synthetic ATF.)

This method has the advantage of not having to get under the car, flushes everything (cooler included) and will get out just about all the old fluid. I would say that the whole thing can be done in about 1/2 hr. too.