whats up everyone?? I need some advice on some good non-synthetic tranny fluid. Nissan wants like 140 to flush it out, but i would rather do it myself and save some cash. So does anyone know of any good brand of regular tranny fluid??

thanks
Cris

 

refill with B&M trick shift. i wouldn't want to flush it myself. a local shop should do it for around 80-100 if that changes your mind. also draining and refilling is different from flushing...

 

well u can do it yourself, there are instructions on here somewhere, i just need some good fluid reccommendations w/ a car that has 100k on it now

 

I just bought 7 quarts of Castrol DexronIII Mercon today. The Haynes manual has some really dumb info about the trans. oil. The say to use Nissan-Matic D or equivalent....WHAT THE HELL ARE SOME EQUIVALENTS!!?? I read somewhere online that the DexronIII is suppose to be a good substitute.

 

The equivalents are any ATF's that can meet the Dexron III spec.

 

I used Pennzoil ATF in my Max when I flushed the whole system at 46K. Drained once and refilled again at 60K with Pennzoil. Since it was the 1st time for me doing a tranny fluid switcheroo, I used inexpensive stuff. With the Altima I felt more "experienced" so I used Mobil 1. Couldn't tell a bit of difference between the 2 cars performance-wise that I'd attribute to the different ATF brands, or syn vs regular fluid. Both trannys run fine.

 

You might not be able to feel the difference, but I can provide a real-life, unscientific comparison between two virtually identical cars, an 00 Max and an 00 I-30, both of which I maintain for their owners...

I serviced the 00 Maxima this week with AMSOIL 10w-30 oil and ATF. I have been taking care of this car since it was new and it now has 78K on it. It's accumulated ~40K since the last time I serviced the transaxle (third time in all doing a partial drain through the drain plug). The transmission fluid I drained out was in very good condition and there was no visible evidence of wear materials..I could clearly see thru the stream of fluid as it drained, and it was red in color...it looked essentially new.

By contrast, I recently serviced an '00 Infinity I-30...I also installed AMSOIL in it's engine and transmission. That car had ~58K on it and had been well maintained with all service up to date and performed exclusively by the dealer with petroleum lubricants. When I drained the transmission, the fluid from the Infinity was dark and the bottom of my drain pan had a bunch of metallic glitter and very fine black residue in it. The owner noticed a huge difference in the vehicle (with AMSOIL now in it) and to quote him, "it runs so good it's scary".

The difference between the transmission fluids and visible wear metals drained from two cars was striking. I have friends and Nissan customers on the road with over 200K on their transmissions with AMSOIL with absolutely no problems. So while you might not be able to feel a huge difference, I believe a transmission protected with synthetics will last longer.

I also have a lot of personal experience with synthetic gear oils, with similar results.