I'm checking the tranny fluid about half an hour of driving it for a while. My reason for this is I know not to check it cold, but when it's "fresh hot" I'm guessing there's a substantial amount of ATF still in the filler tube and running down the dipstick. If I wait a half an hour I figure most of the ATF has slipped down the walls of the filler tube, but the fluid's still at "hot" levels within the tranny.
Sean, in my case, I'm able to get the dipstick fully seated with no problems at all, it's a snug fit when seated, but not hard to pull out... pretty much as one would expect a "normal" such item to fit/seat.
My process of shifting is basically, "put it in Drive and don't mess with it", but when I'm shifting manually, on the odd occasion that I'm testing or whatever, I go 1, 2, 3, 4 (with the "Manual" mode/button engaged). Otherwise I basically drive it as one would normally drive an automatic.
That being said, however,...
...for almost as long as I've owned it the car has had this really annoying habit of surging a couple of hundred RPM once I've hit 4th gear. Even using cruise control here in FL on our flat highways - well, flat EVERYTHING.
(The surging is, **I believe**, unrelated to the transmission and rather a TPS or air/fuel signal problem.) However, up until this recent "catastrophic" failure, if I put the car in "Manual" mode, it won't surge and I can use cruise control just fine. Now, with this really bad issue I'm having the "manual" button makes no difference at all. But for the record, I have driven it with the "manual" button pushed in for many months, but like I say, I generally wait until I'm in 4th gear and ready to engage my cruise control.
EDIT: Also, I have the car in FWD mode because I began experiencing some thumping noises in my rear diff. Putting it in FWD totally "fixed" that. I've been driving it that way for many months now, no issues as near as I can tell from that but I thought I'd mention it.
EDIT #2: I totally misread the question about the cycling of gears - I thought it was a question about how I shifted when driving manually. Now I see that it was a question about how to cycle through the gears to check the ATF level when the tranny's cold. Dopey me!
