Of the 5 people I've asked IRL, two have told me something like "in older trucks sometimes the transmission fluid is almost 'holding together' a bad transmission, and doing a flush & replacement could cause premature failure" I thought it odd but one of the two people was a friend who's a mechanic (at a very low-level local garage but still) Want to do anything I can to keep this on the road, while I figure out & save for a transmission rebuild/replacement (still unsure which is best here)
I bought this truck earlier this month, was all I could afford, long story short it drove fine with me and when my mechanic drove me in it, then my neighbor backs it out of the driveway, shifts from R to D quickly and gasses it and it slips 100% (thing shifts real slow....) From then-on it's been a nightmare in 1st, once I get to 12-15mph and it switches to 2nd it's been fine (except one incident where it kept bucking back&forth slipping/catching, was the furthest I'd driven it and haven't driven half that far since)
I've got one of the mechanic's friends saying he has a siphoning-pump at his place and he's advising me to come by, I had some "Lucas anti-slip" and he told me to get another bottle and that we'd siphon-out that much, then replace w/ the anti-slip...I'm hesitant so was hoping to run this by an audience before doing this!! (will likely get a tube and do it myself, want to be more precise w/ the fluid-level than I'm expecting he'll be)
Thanks a TON for any help on this one!! Oh and one thing I should note that I've found weird is that I've had it for ~3wks now, and the thing had a very slow ATF leak when I got it, but after 2wks the dipstick was still reading over-full by a little bit (I tried every conceivable way of measuring, car cold/hot, in/out of all the gears, etc and it always reads past the Hot marking no matter what) Because I can literally see a tiny (dime-sized) droplet on the ground under the ATF tank 2/3 morning, I've been adding a little of that anti-slip to replace what I expect it's lost, but am at a loss for why it still seems over-full if it's been leaking for almost 3wks now...mechanic friend looked at this and said it's fine, didn't give a rational answer as to how it's OK to have the fluid clearly above the dipstick's Hot top-line...glad the internet exists, thanks again!!!
