Flush vs. Pan Drop vs. Drain and Fill....

[RTKY]

Hey folks. I tried searching a bit before posting, so I apologize as I'm sure this has been addressed many times...

I bought a 2021 AC Tacoma back in January and have slowly been going through the truck and catching it up to being current on maintenance. The original owner stayed on top of oil changes, but otherwise just drove it. Fortunately, everything looks pretty clean so far. All that's left to get it caught up is transmission and power steering fluid.

I'm at 73k on the odometer now and have to decide what I'm going to do about the transmission. This is one areas I don't feel confident in outside of a drain and fill or maybe a pan drop. I did a drain and fill on our 4Runner at 60k, but I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet and have each one serviced as budget allows at the dealer...

What is the consensus around here, if there is a consensus at all? Is it worth it to pay big dollars to have it flushed, new filter, etc.? Is a pan drop the best of all worlds? Seems like this could be good since you can clean the magnets out and change the filter too... Or do most of us get away with a simple drain and fill, or sequence of drain and fills and just leave the filter be?

Thanks for the input, and again sorry if I'm missing an obvious thread somewhere where this is covered well. Look forward to the discussion.

 

[RTKY]

No one’s touching this one I see

I think I’m gonna go with a series of drain and fills over the course of a few hundred miles.

 

[Tac21]

You will find several YouTube vids on this subject. I’m planning to do a drain/fill this summer. Get an infrared hand held temperature reader. Some swear by this, others use the jumper wire method or the expensive scan tool. Keep it simple.

 

[RTKY]

For sure. The drain and fill is simple enough, but I was mainly curious as to if others found it beneficial enough to be worth the trouble to go with a true flush or the pan drop with a new filter. Doesn't seem worth the effort really. To me, the biggest pro to the pan drop seems like the chance to clean off those magnets, so that a chunk of gunk doesn't get dislodged from there some time down the road and cause issues.

 

[JBlake329]

I'm in the same boat (that's how I got here), I have 53K miles on my 2017, and after a lot of research, I have settled on for this time around, I'm just going to do a drain and fill 3 times with about 100 miles in between them.
In another 30K (once I get to 80k-85k miles) I plan on doing the same, but on the 3rd drain drop the pan and replace the filter, gaskets/seals, and clean the magnets.

 

[RTKY]

I'm in the same boat (that's how I got here), I have 53K miles on my 2017, and after a lot of research, I have settled on for this time around, I'm just going to do a drain and fill 3 times with about 100 miles in between them.
In another 30K (once I get to 80k-85k miles) I plan on doing the same, but on the 3rd drain drop the pan and replace the filter, gaskets/seals, and clean the magnets.

Interesting! Where I landed was that if I were to do a flush or the pan drop and filter/magnets, I’d wanna do it earlier closer to 60k. If I was in your shoes, I’d do the service now or at 60k, which is actually what’s recommended by Toyota. My problem is that I got the truck at 69k, so I was already a ways past the suggested interval.