Trans drain/flush or drop pan and change filter?

New member and first post so sorry if I'm posting in the wrong area! I have a 2015 Tundra Limited. Do all my own maintenance and I'm way preventative minded. My question after reading tons of posts here, is should I just drain and refill my transmission or drop the pan and replace the filter? My truck only has 33,500 miles but it's 8 years old so does the age matter when it comes to this or just the miles? Never done this before but I'm going to experiment with my wife's Mazda first! Her's is at 65k. Was going to use a Veepeak OBD to check temp but it's on backorder so was thinking of doing the jumper wire that I read somewhere to get the display to show the D blinking indicating tran temp? I have a camper cap on my truck so I guess that's what the manual means by car top carrier? I towed a small 18' camper from PA to FL and on a couple close trips but no heavy or constant towing. If I just drain and fill I was thinking of doing the method of removing the cooler line, starting the engine and pumping out a gallon from the converter. If I do that wouldn't it just take about 4 qts. for the pan after I drain through the drain plug, then another 4-5 qts. from removing the cooler hose and converter? That seems like the bulk of it so why would I need 2-3 drain/fills? Hoping to get away with a 12 qt. Toyota FS package of fluid on Amazon for $180. Do I need more/less, should I do the pan and filter too at only 33k miles or do that later around 60K and just replace fluid now?

 

Only drain and fill, you are asking for broken bolts and possibly a warped pan for no reason at all. Make sure you have the thermostat pinned open on the side of the transmission case. There is a little plunger that needs to go in all the way and then insert a pin or piece of wire in the cross drilled holes to keep it that way while you are servicing it. Remove the fill plug prior to drain so you know for sure that you can replace what you take out.

 

Drain and fill.

 

Drain and fill 40k-50k or 5 years and ur good. Sounds like yours is a little past that on the time frame but I’m sure you would be fine if you did it now.

 

Thank you for the advice. I was on the fence and you helped me make the decision to just drain and fill for now. Would I get by with the 12 quart kit I found on Amazon? I know many people do 3 drain and fills and use about 13 quarts. It sounds like about 3.5 - 3.7 quarts drains out? So if I drained the pan, put 3.5 quarts back in and also pulled the cooler line off, started the engine for about 30 seconds to drain approx. 4 more quarts from the converter, and refill with about 5 quarts, bring temp up to 119 and pull the check plug letting any over fill drain to a trickle, then I'm good? Seems like that is a more thorough change of fluids than draining and filling 3 times and would only take around 9 quarts? Or am I missing anything?

 

I had my 2008 Tundra for 220k before I recently sold it. I had been draining and refilling until about 180k when I dropped the pan to swap out the filter. Two things from that experience 1) I ended up snapping one of the pan bolts which are famous for that. I was lucky and snapped just one so the pan went back on with no leaks and I didn't need to drill it out and replace it and 2) that damn filter screen looked absolutely brand new when I took it out. If I had to do it over I wouldn't bother dropping the pan. It just wasn't worth it.

 

My advice is to stick to what has been working well. Transmissions nowadays are complicated and rather expensive, so you don't want problems.