My Camry's so happy now that she has T-IV inside her again. She shifts so well with T-IV.
About 3 weeks ago, I did a drain and refill with Mobil 1 Synthetic ATF, making the ATF about 45% Mobil 1 and 55% T-IV (we'll say 50/50). Today I did an ATF oil cooler hose flush to replace the 50/50 mixture of Mobil 1 and T-IV with 100 percent T-IV (or near 100 percent).
I quickly noticed an improvement in shifting during the first 40 miles of driving after the flush. I'm sure Mobil 1 Synthetic ATF is a great ATF; it's just not meant for my Aisin U250E tranz. I don't think I'll ever veer from Toyota T-IV again.
Smooth shifting, no more occasional jerkiness, less shudder when switching into and out of reverse, and fewer down-shifting probs.
The U250E's total capacity is probably 8.5 quarts (the Amsoil site doesn't know). To perform the flush, I bought 13 quarts (a case and a loose quart) from Machens Toyota yesterday for $4.83 per quart. Sure beats the $7 they originally quoted me.
To start things off, I did a drain and refill of the pan's 3.7 quarts. Then did a flush using the tranz-in hose, which enters the transmission at a lower spot than the tranz-out hose, unlike what the author of the tutorial mentioned (he said it's "usually the upper of the two lines"--not so with the '06 Camry). With the '06 Camry, the tranz-in hose (or return hose) is closer to the driver side than the passenger side.
The hose's spring clamp opened by using an 8-inch slip-joint pliers I bought from Harbor Freight. A second, smaller pliers was also helpful during the re-application of the clamp to the hose. There's limited room to work in there. Both pliers came in handy, the bigger and the smaller.
After the 3.7-quart drain and refill, I flushed with 8 quarts of T-IV ATF. (Actually, I flushed with about 7.3 quarts and added another 0.7 quart after I had driven the car for about 34 highway miles to get the ATF nice and hot for more accurate checking on the dipstick--didn't want to overfill).
I may yet add another 0.25 or 0.3 quart after checking the dipstick level after a 100-mile trip to St. Louis. That ought to get the ATF nice and hot. Looks like the dipstick shows I can put in another 0.25 or 0.3 quart. But I'll wait for the 100-mile drive to verify. Right now when hot, the fluid level on the dipstick is midway between the 2 cool zone notches and the
2 hot zone notches.During the flush, I added a quart or 1.2 quarts at a time while the car idled, but I would have to turn off the car after a quart or so because I couldn't keep up with the faster outflow of the ATF into the drain pan. When I saw the stream from the hose begin to break up, I'd shut the car off and pour in a second quart. Then I'd turn the car back on and let it idle while pouring another quart or so down the ATF dipstick tube.
Sorry to be so detailed, but I'm making notes so I can review them if I ever need to do another flush. I'll probably only do drain and refills from here on out, though, because they're faster than flushes. I did enjoy my first ATF flush, but I think the second time would just seem like a chore. However, first time was very interesting and fun. Definitely worth doing at least once.