Phillip Pearson - web + electronics notes

tech notes and web hackery from a new zealander who was vaguely useful on the web back in 2002 (see: python community server, the blogging ecosystem, the new zealand coffee review, the internet topic exchange).

2006-10-29

Accidental ATF change

I got a proper oil change kit (drain pan, filter wrench, funnel) the other day so now doing oil changes is a little more fun, as I don't need to worry so much about spilling oil everywhere. So much so that I thought I'd change the oil in my girlfriend's car (a 1993 Mitsubishi Libero - the automatic diesel version) today.

So I looked under the car to find the nut to undo to let the oil out. I couldn't see anything near the oil filter, but there was one that looked about right on the other side of the engine bay, so I undid that and started draining oil. Uh-oh... engine oil's supposed to be brown, not red... is that her transmission I've just drained?

I've heard that refilling ATF is a terrible ordeal, so I was a bit worried at this point. I thought I had to get some special tube, a funnel attachment, and all that, but it turned out that the funnel in the oil change kit had an attachment that was *just* small enough to fit inside the car's ATF dipstick tube, and luckily I had about 3.5L of Dexron III ATF in the garage, left over from a previous repair, so I poured 2L of that in through the funnel into the dipstick tube. The only tricky bit was holding the funnel just slightly out of the tube so that air could flow out, otherwise the ATF wouldn't go down the funnel at all. Otherwise no problem. All seems to be OK with the car so far...

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