Long, but what you are looking for:
Credit where credit is due: Olympic shared this method with me and I did it.
Ok Neil, firstly, relax....the gloom and doom these guys are preaching is not the norm (at least not with me). No flames guys, it is just my opinion that at 80,000, it is not always the case that your tranny is going to grenade if you change the fluid. Heck it could grenade if you dont. I also have a 95 atx with 64,000 on it...I got the occasional 1-2 shift as it hunted for 2nd at 7,000 rpm, it could get scary, but never fear. I did the fluid at 64,000 and its at 68,000 now, no problems, no worries.
To answer your question the procedure for the tranny maintenance is as follows:
Drop the tranny pan and replace the filter inside with a new one....sounds horrific, but it is very easy to do, the filter is the only thing you will see when you take the pan off. Tip on removal of pan: loosen the bolts until it starts to leak out out....go get a sandwhich....come back and loosen more and let it leak some more. There are about 8 quarts of fluid in there so be patient. You could drop it all at once, but it is messy.
Once the pan is off, the filter is right there. Pull it out. Make sure the filter sleeve comes out too, mine got stuck. How will you know? the new filter wont fit in the hole. Clean out the pan in your basement sink. there is alot of crap in the pan next to the magnet. Take the magnet off and clean with carb cleaner or rag and patience. Clean pan off so gasket has a good surface to mate too.
Put gasket and pan back on car. Some kits come with two gaskets since there were two auto trannies. AOD and XAOD. Use a star technique for putting the bolts back in: ie: gradually tighten the bolts back on a litte at a time: one on one side, then one on the other. Come back and tighten them all to finish up. Dont get fluid on the gasket.
Ok, now the easy part: once the pan is on, put new fluid into the trans thru that little pipe where the dipstick is. I did the following: 8 quarts came out of pan, so I added 9 quarts back.
Tricky part: locate the trans cooler which is infront of the radiator. It is a smaller radiator about 3 inches tall and 21 inches long. Disconnect the hose on the drivers side of the cooler. Put a piece of hose on the cooler that goes to a bucket for collection of old fluid. Put another section of hose on the hose you just took off the cooler and place that into a bucket containing new fluid. If you are queasy at this point, dont worry, what you are going to do is start the car and the old fluid will leave and be replaced by the new fluid being sucked in from the clean bucket. Just a double check here: start the car then shut it off quickly. This will tell you what hose the dirty fluid will come out of. It should be the hose you just hooked up to the cooler.
Now, there should be about 13 quarts of fluid in the whole system when you started, you drained out 8, so you have about 5 left in the torque converter to get out. What I did was put 6 quarts of fluid in the clean bucket (the very clean bucket) just to make sure it didnt get empty. Allow 7 quarts of fluid to come out of the system: the 5 that are dirty plus one or two for good measure. You can tell when the clean fluid starts to come out of the car. Shut off car. Check fluid level. top off if needed.
I used Mobile 1 Synthetic (4.99 a quart). Many swear by Redline, which is a much better fluid, but has to be ordered online at 7.99 a quart. Purple stuff is cool too. Up to you. If I were to do it again....hmmm might use the purple stuff.
Neat tip: you have all these empty jugs of expensive fluid: take a funnel and put it on one of the jugs. Place an empty jug in the funnel to drain that little bit of fluid. Guys, you would be surprized, but I had a half a quart in that jug by the time all the other jugs drained into it. At 5.00 a quart, that is a quick 2.50 I saved.
Now, you now have new fluid and stuff, stay on top of the maintenance of the tranny (replace every 30,000 miles).
If you still have that 1-2 shift problem (I still did occasionally), get a Ted B chip. I have not had a problem since.
Hope this helps, let us know how it goes.
