Originally Posted By: electrolover
I used a qt of atf to free a sticky lifter once. Dont know whats in it, but it worked.
I had a quart of ATF from my 99 'rolla that I no longer have. The '00 is a manual, the ATF was the wrong type for my wife's Civic, and both cars were 1/2qt low and 500 miles short of their next OCIs. Rather than toss it, I said WTH and topped up both cars.
I didn't take before shots of her car, but over the course of the next 500 miles her oil went from caramel to black, her gas mileage went back up from 21MPG to 28MPG, a nasty tick disappeared, and the fill hole is at least 5 shades lighter. It's definitely got more pep than it had 500 miles ago and I'll be buying 10 more quarts of ATF -- her trans was fine before the engine "cleaning" but the fluid didn't fare too well against the 500 mile Italian tune-up. It doesn't *smell* like burnt fluid, so I'm pretty sure I just knocked a bunch of [censored] loose, so now it's time for a fluid and filter change on the trans... fun.
My Corolla was had been parked for a month at the time. I started driving it again Thursday, after posting several series of internal photos on Toyota Nation (look for a link in my thread on the PCMO board titled Valve Cover Porn) I started driving it again. It didn't completely eliminate the VVT-i tick, but it did lessen it, my LTFT has improved from -12 to -4.8, gas mileage is up 2 or 3 MPG (I'm not saying the ATF did this, that's small enough to be coincidental), I don't get that puff of smoke when I floor it after idling for a minute anymore, and I managed to embarrass a GTI that wanted to play cat and mouse the other night. I'm still 300 miles shy of my OCI on this car and, if you've seen the internals, the engine is pretty clean inside already (except, perhaps, for coked rings, which the ATF may or may not -- but seems to have -- addressed). I'm not expecting the oil to be much darker than the medium caramel it was before the ATF was added. Definitely a marked improvement in performance from 200 miles ago, though, which I can only attribute to the ATF cleaning pistons, rings, and -- due to an oil burning problem I think has now been resolved -- valves and combustion chambers.
It's worth noting, before Skyship jumps my [censored] for this, that I didn't intend to use the ATF for cleaning. My purpose was to use up some good fluid I happened to have, rather than wasting it.
Edit: Come to think of it, I don't recall hearing the VVT-i tick when I ran to Taco Bell a little bit ago...
