would anybody be able to tell me the correct way to drain the tranny, is it similar to changing the oil?
also what kind of fluid would i need for my 99 dakota 5.2L?
also when you add fluid do you just poor it down the tube that the dipstick resides?
thanks in advance

 

drop the pan, scrape off the old pan gasket, replace the filter with an o.e.m. filter with a ncie new o-ring, i think its orange, make sure the old o ring from the old filter is not stuck in the valve body where the exit port of the filter insterts into * you need a torx socket to take it out, i forgot the size*, i normally let it drip for about 2 hours to get all the old fluid out w/o the filter attached, clean off the metal collection magnet, it looks like a porcuupine, you most likely are in trouble, if its just covered in little salt like particles of shavings, your perfectly fine, then replace pan to transmission with new gasket, and use mopar ATF + 3 or 4, ask a dealer which one to use, its gonna be about 5 quarts, and do a test drive, bring spare fluid incase you gotta top it off, your better off being a bit to low and add a little each time cause if you overfill it, your gonna have to drop the pan since the high level will become airated and that will destroy the tranny..

if its a manual, you have to plugs on the side of the case, one at the bottom and one somewhat in the middle, bottom one is the drain plug, the middle one is the fill plug, fill it up to the bottom of the hole

 

for a flush you need a help of another person, and there is a line running on the left side of the cooler to the transmission, attach a hose to rad not the pipe, and start the truck up and put it into neutral, let the line run until almost nothing is coming out but make sure not to run it dry (with help of friend) then add fluid continuously until the fluid has run clean (nice and red) But if you are just changing the fluid , you probably don't need to flush it, but flushing will probably improve life as all fluid gets replaced, you can take it also to a dealership and they have a machine that does this and will cost you 25 quarts of fluid. But you can do it yourself, I did it but it is a pain, I had water so i had to drain it completely. (This is to FLUSH you need more fluid than you think. Pick up 20 quarts or so.)

 

yea on that note, risky as hell to cook the tranny, worth it, yea, but i rather spend $xxx to have the dealer do it versus looking at $2500 cause i messed up the transmission trying to flush it, nothting against varsis, just not so great of an idea

 

Flush will do a better job Shop will probably charge 200-300

 

o of course a flush will do a better job, changing the fluid every 15-20k miles is a plus,