I changed the Camry's ATF today (added Mobil 1 Synthetic ATF)

Built_Well · 2009-07-03T04:19:33+00:00

Today I did a drain and refill of my transmission pan's Toyota T-IV, replacing it with Mobil 1 Synthetic ATF. 3.7 quarts of red T-IV drained out and I replaced it with 4 quarts of red M1 Synthetic. The extra 1/4 of a quart or 0.30 quarts isn't too much extra, is it? Not enough to cause foaming or windage, right? (Not even sure windage is an issue in automatic transmissions like windage can be with motor oil inside an engine.) Anyway, the car really likes the M1 ATF so far. True only about 50 percent of the car's total ATF capacity is M1. The other 50 percent is the factory fill of T-IV (now 25,000 miles old and 3.5 years). Maybe it's my imagination, but the car seemed like it was shifting a lot better today with the M1 synthetic in it. Or maybe it's just a result of having some fresh sauce in the car. I took a sample of the drained T-IV ATF and will mail it to Blackstone Labs tomorrow, just for fun. I don't expect to see any problems. The only thing I didn't much care for during the ATF change was the surprise of finding an Allen wrench socket on the transmission pan's drain plug. It's not a regular bolt, so I wasn't able to use my trusty Craftsman torque wrench to torque the drain plug to 36 foot-pounds. This is an '06 Camry, and unfortunately the Camry service and repair manual I downloaded from is for an older 2002 (same 5th generation Camry but the '06 and '05 models are considered Generation 5.5 --they differ slightly from the 2002 to 2004 cars). So after reading the CamryStuff .pdf document, I was expecting to torque a regular drain plug bolt to 36 foot-pounds, but obviously I couldn't with the Allen wrench (ie, hex? wrench) drain plug. Is there some way to properly torque an Allen wrench bolt? Does it take a special adapter fitted to your torque wrench? I'm concerned I came close to stripping the threads by overtightening with an unmeasured Allen wrench. If I did come dangerously close to stripping the threads, might...