Can't get your MTX fluid out? Here's an easy way with my DIY Fluid Sucker

[F-22 Raptor SHO]

What olympic said. It would be safe for you to strike a match and smoke around a puddle of ATF, but you wouldnt do the same thing near a puddle of gas would you? The difference between the two here is volatility. The more volatile, the more risky. You could hold a match over a puddle of ATF or oil and not start a fire.....you do that with any type of volatile solvent, you will be missing your arm hairs.

 

[SHO-93-ATX]

Wowzers... thats damn true though Mike, id rather learn something and save 20$ and use3-4 hrs of my time trying to learn, so i know how to do it once again but faster and more convient... then letting some joe smoe do it for 20$

Wow? "Aren't Import suckers people who drive Japanize cars?"
ROFLMAO.........
I am smrt I am smrt. S-M-R-T. I am smrt ?????????????????

MelectroK- please what are you getting at?

Bret,

 

[Snellgrovia]

Maybe I'm just being stupid here....but where EXACTLY does the tube go? Knowing me, I'll stick it in the wrong hole and suck out god knows what.

 

[F-22 Raptor SHO]

Slide under the car and look at the transmission on the drivers side in the front. There is a filler plug in the front of the transmission that has a 3/8 inch square in it....a 3/8 inch rachet fits perfectly into the head of this fill plug to loosen it. I would hit it with some PB blaster first before you try to loosen it as it can be pretty corroded sometimes.

After you take this plug out, stick your tubing down into the hole. Ideally, you should be able to suck out 3 quarts (or slightly less) of fluid.

Use the IV bag approach to fill it back up until fluid start to leak out of the hole as it is trying to over fill. Put the plug back in. I would take some plumbers tape (also called teflon tape) and wrap it around the plug before installing that way next time the plug wont be so hard to get out.

 

[Lance Cheney]

I managed to do something similar with just a turky baster and using the power of gravity. My grandpa used to do farming and I was always fascinated by the way they would use a siphon to suck water out of a ditch, pull it over a hill, and then dump it into the fields. You can do the same thing with your tranny -- push the end of tubing into the fill plug until it hits basically the bottom of the tranny. Get the other end over your oil pan or drain bucket, get your turkey baster and suck on the end of the tubing. This will pull fluid into the tubing and as long as you've pulled it past the highest point in the tubing, gravity will do the rest. Self-draining, no electric equiment needed, and you can just drain it straight into an oil pan. I wouldn't recommend using your mouth for suction (to get the flow started) but I suppose you could if you wanted.

I since have installed a fill plug, which is a bit easier, but not much!

-Lance

 

[Off Road SHO]

Lance,

Yeah that's cool how farmers do that "irrigation twist" thing with the bent pipe. Learned that from a farmer in 1972 and have impressed city folk with it ever since.

The only problem with using the siphon approach to this problem, is that as soon as you suck one little bit of air with the tranny end of the hose, the siphon effect is disabled. With Mike's ingenious little contraption, you can suck any fluid (air or oil) all the time.

We here in the AZ SHO Club are so proud of our Mikey.


Tom

 

[shojuan]

This will pull fluid into the tubing and as long as you've pulled it past the highest point in the tubing, gravity will do the rest.

You mean as long as you pull the liquid past the surface elevation of the fluid you mean to siphon. Late in the day and you've had your nose buried in electronics too long so you need a late night drunk, such as myself, to correct the slip of the tongue, lol!

I use siphons a lot when brewing beer. A LOT. Brewing folks who get obsessed with gadgetry eventually can't help themselves and buy a high temperature, food grade safe pump...the forced induction of the home brewing world if you will. . A say bah. Siphon is free and when I need to force some fluid I just pressurize it with my 20 lb CO2 tank and use one (or more) of my 16 stainless cornelius kegs (that's a 5 gallon soda keg to those (most) who don't know) as a reservoir. I haven't brewed this year and my garage keg reefer, a temperature controlled 10 cu-ft chest freezer, called it quits. I've had my eye on a 7 cuft job at Costco (where I bought my 10 ft^3 jobber my senior year at UCSD ) to replace it...will still hold 5 kegs and takes up less space. Gotta fix my temperature controller too though. There's a fault in its themistor circuit. No big deal. Nice time to build in a side circuit with a nice switch to "fool" the controller to chill down to 32 or a bit below for lagering. Stock it only goes down to 40 degrees. Would be nice to brew a nice stock of beer and have a rest stop here for a fall Pinnacles run.

 

[todras]

Just do the drain plug. Much easier and easier to change the next time around.

 

[Off Road SHO]

You mean as long as you pull the liquid past the surface elevation of the fluid you mean to siphon. Late in the day and you've had your nose buried in electronics too long so you need a late night drunk, such as myself, to correct the slip of the tongue, lol!

I use siphons a lot when brewing beer. A LOT. Brewing folks who get obsessed with gadgetry eventually can't help themselves and buy a high temperature, food grade safe pump...the forced induction of the home brewing world if you will. . A say bah. Siphon is free and when I need to force some fluid I just pressurize it with my 20 lb CO2 tank and use one (or more) of my 16 stainless cornelius kegs (that's a 5 gallon soda keg to those (most) who don't know) as a reservoir. I haven't brewed this year and my garage keg reefer, a temperature controlled 10 cu-ft chest freezer, called it quits. I've had my eye on a 7 cuft job at Costco (where I bought my 10 ft^3 jobber my senior year at UCSD ) to replace it...will still hold 5 kegs and takes up less space. Gotta fix my temperature controller too though. There's a fault in its themistor circuit. No big deal. Nice time to build in a side circuit with a nice switch to "fool" the controller to chill down to 32 or a bit below for lagering. Stock it only goes down to 40 degrees. Would be nice to brew a nice stock of beer and have a rest stop here for a fall Pinnacles run.

Dang, Rick, I wanna come visit you! I'm not a big beer drinker but a 32 degree beer sounds good right now. It's 110 degrees here right now and I just changed out a cooler pad at the "old Ones" house. Pheeew!



Tom

 

[greenbeanmtx]

Wow

My hats off you ya for this creation. Id rather do this than drill a hole. Knowing me id drill into something important. Like my variable transducer accumilator conetacizer haha j/k guys. I heard some import kid here in my town explain to someone that thats what vtech mean....... yet he spelled it vtac........ sounds like a brand of shop vac or something. Haha poor honda guys

 

[bolsterboy]

omg thank you

i just bought a 90sho, and the throw out bearing went out on my way home with it, woo full clutch replacement, it will be fun, but this little invention is gonna go a long way i cant thank every one enough, oh yeah, and dont let any one tell you that its not fun to drive an sho when you dont have a clutch, cause really the power is still there, its just a long time between shifts
thanks again,
matt

 

[Redline]

Sweet! As soon as I get myself a bottle of juice and a shop vac I will be all set!

 

[Minnesho]

You can also bleed brakes/clutches this way. Had to bleed the clutch REAL GOOD on my Probe... I made something similar with a vacuum canister from the hospital (my sister in-law is a nurse) using one of those cans that are used for suctioning patients. Hooked up my HVAC Vacuum pump and it worked great! Only problem was I didn't turn off the pump soon enough and it imploded the canister in the bottom. Spiderwebbed the **** out of it! I grabbed it and tossed it in the parts washer before the fluid started leaking out all over the floor... Luckily I have another and a source for more!

-Eric

Mine is similar, it is also from a hospital but its a glass suction bottle, and it even has the gomco vacuum pump with it. its pretty small and i made a nice cart for it.

 

[SHOCarGo]

yea trans doesn't go up with a spark, but with a torch it does.. on of those dee dee dee moments

 

[95GOOSE]

Oldie but goodie!

 

[SHOCH]

Classic. w/ a Thanks.

 

[DavidT]

Anybody have pics of this little gem of a contraption?

 

[OffLikeASHOt]

I've been wanting to do my MTX fluid replacement but I just dont have the guts to drill and tap a drain plug into something that could cost me a bundle if I do it wrong. So, I have to go the suck route. But how to do it?

Most devices at the autoparts store just dont work well, so I got to playing around and came up with a nice DIY tool.

I used to have vacuum evacuation chambers like this all the time in my old lab, but those a pricey. So, I made one out of the following parts:

1 half gallon gator-aid bottle
4 feet of tyvek tubing 1/4 inch in diameter.
1 shop vac.

The shop vac creates a vacuum in the gator aid bottle, but since the hose is in the side of the bottle, your vacuum is transferred to the end of the tyvek tubing. Result: mini vacuum that you can suck up oil with. Here is the finished product that when hooked up to your shop vac will serve as a catch bin for all your fluids:

A word of warning to non chemists: this device is not suitable for flamable liquids with as the vapors will go into your vacuum cleaner and could ignite if sparked. Since Oil does not evaporate easily, there is little risk of explosion


Here is the device in action:

I used the small tubing to get way down into the transfer case. Mind you, the flow rate would be faster with larger tubing, but the smaller tubing was more manueverable. Took the device about 30-40 min to fill the jug. You could use like a big ocean spray jug, but the bigger the jug the less ridgid it is. Most often it ends up imploding (i started with a milk jug, then Tide jug, but both were 1 gallon sized and pretty wimpy)


My assistant cleans up after the transfusion:

GIVE ME 2 QT's of M1 stat!!:

The IV method of delivery of fluids works very well....took all of 10 min to add 3 quarts to the tranny.


The patient pulls thru the transfusion successfully and the color has returned to the vital organs:

Perfect! Thanks for the post this works surprisingly well. I admit I had my doubts but this is an integral part of my shop now. For other readers, know that this system works very well for most fluids in the car.