Okay so I'm too cheap to buy a proper fluid filler (e.g. transmission fluid change), so I made this:


Take a 2-liter soda bottle, drill a 7/32" hole in the cap and a ~3/8" hole in the thick plastic at the neck. Run about 3' of 1/4" vinyl tubing through the hole, far enough so it gets to the bottom of the bottle. Fill the bottle most of the way up with your fluid, e.g. ATF. Put the cap back on the bottle, and set up your compressor to about 10psi, with a rubber tipped blow gun. Stuff the tubing up into the tranny fill hole, past the little plastic height overflow gimmick. Push air into the bottle through the 3/8 hole in the neck, and the fluid will zip right up the line through the tube.

Fill until it overflows into a clean drip pan. Run the motor until the fluid is at the nominal fill temperature, I recall 45C. Put the drain plug back in. I tried under-filling the tranny and then topping it up when warm, but the warming happens too fast unless you carefully underfill just right. I ended up literally sitting with a fan on the stopped motor waiting for the fluid to cool down. Pretty sure there's no reason not to reclaim the excess fluid that drips into the catch basin; you did clean the transmission pan real nice, right?

This worked with 75W-90 gear oil, too, though it was a lot slower.

 

Nice! This is the thread you were referring to in our other discussion. I like home hacks that work just as well as using "the right tools". Every job has the right tools, they just don't have to always be store bought.

The gear oil is thicker, warming it up would make it flow easier, but you would have to wait for it to cool off once it is in the diffs, then top off at room temp. Not sure it will be faster with the wait time, though.

 

Glad you like. Cheapness is the mother of invention.

Good observation about the gear oil, but it really wasn't bad. I had some time to lie there on the garage floor and think about life while the level in the bottle dropped.

 

Nice idea! And, hey, if you want to be really cheap (I mean that in a good way!) and don't have an air compressor... eliminate the 3/8" hole and just squeeze the bottle!