I Flushed my ATF yesterday and made the mistake of not adding enough fluid. I ran the car for only a couple minutes, then when it hardly accelerated I realized that there wasn't enough fluid. So after the right amount was added, the car was running but the transmission began to shift pretty hard. It would rev up to about 3000 rpms and shift pretty harsh. WE noticed that the newly added ATF smelled burnt already. The car has about 75k miles on it and I haven't had any trans problems prior to the ATF change yesterday. Any idea to what could be going on? I didn't think we could damage the trans through a simple ATf flush..

 

Running a trans low on fluid just 1 time can kill it. When you installed the pan gasket, did you uses sealer or install it dry?

 

I greased up the gasket before I installed it

 

If too much grease or rtv is used, it can plug up the small hole in the pan rail. This is the servo dump hole .

 

Well I flushed it out again, it ran pretty hard for a bit, but after an hour or two of driving shifting became smooth and hasn't changed since

 

Yeah it can be sloppy without enough fluid and take some time to get it all back in the vital parts depending on how the pump is setup.

My Th350 I didn't even have to put fluid in the converter, because the guy that built it said it will fill the converter so fast there was no point to pre-fill.

Glad it worked out okay! Never use silicon on the pan gasket, it usually seals worse.