salad

ONLY fluids meeting GM Dexron III/Ford Mercon/JWS 3309 must be used. Other lubricants can and do cause problems ranging from slipping to fatal clutch damage.

Easy way to go - and safest when dealing with ancient fluid - is drain the tranny, fill the tranny. Repeat x9000.

Furthermore the filter in these things is just a screen to protect the internal oil pump. No need to change it. There's not even really any reason to drop the pan at all unless a severe problem is occurring that is not resolved through proper maintenance.

skife

Salad, that's all any filter is, a screen to catch debris. A filter is like $15, change it.

As for a flush, buddy of mine flushed his aa4 until the fluid looked brand new and used a pressure flushing machine. 150k hard miles and it shifted amazing

cruiser54

Not true about the screen. AW4 has a screen, a metal one. It doesn't have a filter medium resembling Kotex. The factory had no recommended interval for changing it, ever. Their recommendation for normal use was drain and fill every 30,000 miles and every 15,000 miles for severe use.

Your buddy got lucky. Perhaps his trans had been serviced properly during it's life? Who knows?

GAPANDA

As everyone else has said. CHANGE THE FLUID.
This problem will only get worse if you don't.

IMHO, if you aren't a rock crushing four wheeler my advice would be to drop the pan
(the factory gasket is most likely leaking anyway, replace it with a good quality rubber gasket) and purchase B&M Drain Plug Kit #80250 for installation in the DEEP portion of the pan.

This will make the suggested drain(s) and refill(s) a BREEZE in the future. The location of the factory drain is not optimal for total drain unless you raise the front of your Jeep.

If you want, replace the screen as well. Won't hurt. NAPA sells a kit for the Toyota Tundra ( I think ) that includes the screen with a crappy cork gasket. It sells cheaper than than just the screen. Go Figure! Buy the kit, use the screen, throw away the cork gasket.

Good Luck

jj1562

My aw4 was banging into gear when put into drive, reverse and all gears, I took someone's advice from here, do the pan drain, 3,4,5 times, whatever it takes to get it back to the red color, a friend of mine works in a trans shop and has been for the last 10 years or so, he said the same thing, just drain it from the plug, knock on wood mine hasn't given me any problems since

DualSportDad

When my aw4 went out I put a 91 junkyard aw4 in it. Changed the filter and flushed the trans with atf 4. Wheeled the snot out of it, daily drove it, pulled my buddy's 2003 f350 chassis cab 4x4 dually doing 60-70 mph, never had a problem.

salad

No. A filter is present to keep a fluid clean by removing contaminants. Generally these operate in the 20-30 micron level. The AW4's screen is something you'd use for dusting icing sugar. The FSM makes absolutely no reference to replacing it, cleaning it is ONLY mentioned in case of troubleshooting. Same applies to other applications of the AW4 in other vehicles.



Lucky for you then. Not everyone who plays roulette loses. ATF+4 screws up about 90% of the AW4s out there.

Chrysler only started on with this ATF+4 **** when the warranty ran out. After all, what the hell do they care? Plus that was the last product in their lineup using D/M, which, by the way, they were payong royalties to Ford and GM every time they serviced a transmission.

The actual manufacturer of the AW4, Toyota, and Volvo, who are the other players using this transmission, are quite adamant that D/M be used. Chrysler's the last company I'd take any transmission adivce from.

bloddy mud

the screen is nothing special It picks up larger debris and other things that do not need to be there. it wont make a difference weather you change it or not. the best words spoken is drive, flush, drive, flush as many times as you need. that fluid should look cherry when you get done. you don't want brown and burnt it has lost its viscosity and offers no more lub. and DEXlll is what the manual calls for. the ones who built the transmission wanted it to run off certain fluid and your best to use what it calls for

jj1562

.

Runs perfect now!

bloddy mud

great glad you didn't have too much of a head ache

EdZ

I use a some nylon tubing and a hand pump to change/drain the trans oil... I can pump it directly into an old 5 quart oil container... Then I just add new oil of the same volume and I'm done... No mess, no crawling under the car, and in 10 minutes I'm done...
http://www.iboats.com/Fluid-Pump-Lub...-view_id.56375

odgreen

You are one of 4 people who put +4 in an aw4 and had no issues

cruiser54

He said "now".

DualSportDad

On the other hand atf+4 is a Chrysler only fluid so Toyota and Volvo probably wouldn't advise using it even if it was better or OK for the trans.

Guys at my shop that drive Chevy trucks that call for dexron run atf+4 in them with no problem as well which was my reason for not worrying about it.

Just make sure to flush it with aft4 to make sure you get as close to 100% as possible and it should be fine. That would be a bit costly for most but I work at the jeep dealer so I didn't have to pay for the 12 quarts of atf+4. If I worked at a dealer that had bulk dexron I would have used that instead.

Blackcherokee290

To the OP:


My 2 cents is just use drain plug and refill with DexIII/Merc and do that a few times (DRIVE it some between the drain/refills to get it mixed in well) then drop pan and change filter. Low pressure flush I guess. My fluid was at correct level but brown and smelled burnt. At 100k miles I had a tranny flush and now Im at 154k miles no problem. After the change to some new tranny fluid my AW4 shifts way better.