i've been wanting to change the fluid in my max,but i've been told that by changing the fluid i might be asking for trouble,my car is pushing 160,000,but still runs like a champ,i've had the car since last april,and it hasn't given me much trouble,i bought it at 130,000,but it was well taken care of and it ran like a bat out of hell,anyway when i purchased the vehicle it was in need of a bad oil change,and the air filter looked like it was the original,anyway should i change the tranny fluid or not,i've kinda noticed that lately it seems to slip a little when its cold,any advice would be greatly appreciated.thanks.

 

make sure you do not use Synthetic oil though because that may cause a problem on a high mileage car. Also judging by the obvios neglect that you mentioned{oil and air filter} I would recomend you change your fuel filter, PCV valve,spark plugs,tranny fluid and antifreeze to insure continued reliability. I just bought my car with 39K and I am doing all these things to make sure the car is not neglected and will last many miles to come.

 

Change it now. Make sure the a shop uses the Magic Sucker Pump which removes -all- of the old fluid. An ordinary drain-and-refill changes only about half of the fluid.

 

I have spoken to the guys at Courtesy and in my case, I have a 95 SE and it has 115K on it. I have always done the drain & fill, no Magic Sucker deal. Steve @ Courtesy said that it would be risky to fo that to a car with so many miles due to the fact that it could "shock" the system. I am not in any situation to replace my tranny in my max. Daniel what is your opinion on the issue given the risk, I appreciate all opinions.
JCR

 

There are two methods for changing the Automatic Transmission Fluid.

Method 1) An ordinary drain-and-refill may be done by the home mechanic. This method changes only about half of the fluid, but is easy and inexpensive. The cost is 4 or 5 quarts of ATF, plus your time.

Method 2) Most commercial service facilities use the Magic Sucker Pump which changes all of the fluid. The cost is about US$80.

My Maxima is a 5-speed so the issue of ATF change does not apply. I maintain a Honda Accord for a family member. On that car I do a drain-and-refill ATF change with every oil change. It is not a big deal, as the car is already up on jackstands and my hands are already dirty. This costs about US$8/year in ATF and the car is always running on almost-new ATF.

To answer your question directly... there is a risk in replacing your ATF and also a risk in not replacing it. My bias is toward fresh fluid. Go ahead and change it.

 

In addition to the ways Daniel has listed there is a third way to change the ATF fluid. It's done by disconnecting the return line from the cooler to the transmission and having the fluid run into a pan. You have to do this with the engine running so that the transmission pump is working. (With the 3rd gen trans the pump works even in park.) The basic proceedure is to start the car, pump out a couple of quarts, turn the car off, replace the pumped out fluid with new fluid and then pump out more old fluid. Just keep doing this until clean fluid comes out. You can try and refill as the old fluid is coming out, but the pump flows faster than you can refill. With the trans in park it doesn't hurt anything to let the level go low for a few seconds, but you don't want it to go so low that air gets pumped through.
As far as doing this on a trans with a lot of miles, I think it is a very good thing to do. For a car with as many miles as your's has, I would refill with regular fluid, run it for a month or so and refill it again with synthetic. This will get rid of what ever sediment that was loosened up in the first refill.