Hi Guys,
First I have search the forums here and read about everything I could find.
With that in mind, here is what I have: 1999 Windstar (3.8L) w/ approx. 13X,XXX miles on it. We bought the van a little over a year ago w/ 107,000 miles. At that time I checked the tranny fluid and it looked good to me. Maybe not new looking, but still translucent and pinkish.
I do not know if the tranny has ever been flushed before, but the fluid still looks good except for one minor issuse with the van. At light to moderate throttle, the van shutters a bit on accelleration. The shifts feel fine though, not sloppy, but not harsh either.
Since owning the van I have replaced the spark plugs with MC DP's, MC plug wires, a new coil pack (just in case), a faulty fuel injector that gave a misfire code (replaced the isolater bolts at this time, even though they had already been service before) and cleaned out the EGR ports. The van also had a fuel filter installed about 25,000 miles ago.
In flushing the tranny, here is the procedure as I understand it.
Warm up tranny
Take off pan, drain fluid, wipe pan clean, and install new filter/replace pan
Remove return tranny cooler line and use tranny to pump out old fluid
Turn off engine when fluid starts to run low in pan
Refill pan
repeat process untill clean fluid comes out of return line
Top off as necessary
Add the lucas stuff after tranny flush procedure
Is this all correct? Have I left anything out?
I have at least 15 qts. of Mercon V put into the tranny.
In the past I have replaced tranny filters before and did a complete tranny flush on an old Buick, but that car had a drain plug on the TC (even threw a shift kit in it while I was in there).
Never did the flush procedure before as outlined above and just wanted to be sure I have it all down and haven't skipped anything.