I have a Toyota Townace Surf-Ace 2.0lt TD. Last year it was off the road for 6 months whilst I replaced the head following the dreaded overheating scenario. Good news is that its back on the road and working fine – ish!!! I have a new problem. When I start it first thing in the morning the van will not pull away or reverse until the engine warms up. In my ignorance I adjusted the kick down cable this made little difference. After reading past problems on this site I thought it may be the AT fluid needing replacing. This I did, but all I did was to drain and refill (I didn’t clean the filter as the old fluid didn’t seem that burnt.) I have adjusted the kick down cable again. Now it is a lot better, but it is extremely flat in the morning and the colder the weather is, the worse it gets, even to the point of rolling back when it is in drive!!!!!. But when it reaches normal working temperature it works fine. Any ideas please. BTW, I took the van to a transmission specialist who kept it overnight so they could start it from cold in the morning but as they kept it in the garage and the weather was mild they couldn’t find anything wrong with it?????

Many thanks Tom Mcquaid Bristol
- (#7797) Tom McQuaid, 12 Jan 04 11:00

Hello Tom.
These vans are a bit sluggish at first in cold weather, but it shouldn’t roll backwards when it’s in drive. When you changed the ATF you will only have changed what’s in the transmission, not what’s in the Torque converter or the cooling radiator. That’s about half of the oil, and if you didn’t clean the filter, then that wont help either. I would suggest that you take it to an automatic specialist and ask them to change the ATF for you. It should cost about £80 ish, and they should be able to tell how much ware the transmission has, by the state of the sump.

- (#7797) dave Bright, 12 Jan 04 11:10