Made a 300 mile road trip with low trans fluid

Hey guys so I bought a 2007 tundra from a dealer. The dealer was up in mass and I am at school in NY. I bought the car and upon inspection there were no noticeable leaks. When I arrived home I parked in the snow and later noticed a red fluid in the snow. After checking again I found a small leak (2 drips after letting it sit overnight) the transmission was just replaced with a new one 20,000 miles ago. It looks like the plastic lines to the puck are leaking. I read a forum in the gen 1 tundra owners that said there will be a slight hesitation when coming to a stop if the trans fluid is low. My truck has the 4.7L engine so I assumed what I was feeling is similar to that of the gen 1. How screwed am I. I’m not currently driving the truck and will be replacing the lines and draining and replacing the ATF fluid later today.

 

My first call would be to the dealer I bought it from. Welcome from LA (Lower Alabama)!

 

Engine starts to rev when the ATF level is too low. This means there's no line pressure in transmission and it is chewing itself up. If it wasn't revving, no damage was done.

 

Okay it would only rev to about 1500 at cold start and then go down. If it was going to rev up when would that happen? Stop lights, regular driving etc. if I were to drain all the current fluid would there be any signs of metal flakes that would come out or any other signs that would show damage to the transmission? Also I just called the dealer and the owner is going to get back to me when he has a moment today.

 

No, it is like transmission suddenly can't take the engine load, engine revs up a few thousands RPM immediately, the vehicles slows down. You let the gas pedal and it may jerk or slam into gear.

 

This truck is built for offroad use. I once spent night with left side in the ditch and engine running (sometimes running very hard), the truck was tilted at 45 degree, oil and ATF horizons were tilted accordingly, and nothing happened to engine nor transmission. Their pickup tubes are sitting low in sumps.

 

Before I noticed the leak I finally decided to step on it the other night. It kicked down once and then down again and took off without issue. After letting off it shifted at about 5000. So it sounds like the fluid level doesn’t seem to be too low. I was getting what almost felt like the transmission wasn’t disengaging until the truck came to a complete stop though. First truck so I’m not sure if that is normal or not compared to the sportier cars I drove before.

 

You learn to drive this thing slowly. I drive my tuned Volvo like someone behind me is going to take my life, but in truck I just relax. Truck is actually faster in 0-60, but handling is meh.

Also the transmission is adapting to your style of driving all the time.

 

2 drops?,,,,,,, the trans is fine

 

Awesome I’ll post my findings and fix when it’s all said and done. Thank you guys for all being so helpful. I am used to BMW forums where everyone talks out of their ass and usually the question doesn’t get answered so this is a nice breath of fresh air.