I've been wanting to get my transmission flushed for about 3 months now... (have been delaying b/c no time to do it myself) today i went to ask around for prices and i was told i shouldnt (and THEY wouldnt) do a full flush since i didnt know when it was last serviced (brought the car used w/ 108k miles Jan 1.) They said that a flush is recommended only if it was maintained every 30k miles since the car was purchased new..) I have been told this by 4, pretty qualified, people: The Dealer, Cottman transmission manager, damn good mechanic i know, and a firestone serviceman. They said that i should only do a Drain and refill.

ALSO, for the drain an refill, cottman said a synthetic would be good, while damn good mechanic said the opposite. im so confused!

can someone help?!?! ALL I WANT TO DO IS A COMPLETE FLUSH WITH MOBIL1 AFT! BUT NEED SOME MORE ADVICE!

 

how exactly do you want to flush it? I would just change it, when ever people do a clutch change or do any tranny workthey dont use the same gear oil, they change it.

 

It's and automatic tranny

 

Flush it yourself. It's not as stressful to the tranny as the pressure flusher machines. Just drain the tranny fluid, refill with synthetic, then pull the return line from the transmission cooler on the bottom of your radiator (to figure out which is which, unplug all your coil packs and crank the engine and see which way the liquid flows). Once you have that established have a friend crank and run the engine. Every ~2qts of fluid that comes out, stop the car and replace with synthetic (I use 2 1 gallon milk jugs for measuring purposes). Stop replacing when the fluid coming out is the new stuff (lighter, more reddish in color). This method doesn't "force" anything through the tranny, it just utilizes the flowing fluid that the tranny circulates. Unless your old tranny fluid is extremely black and flows very thin, I think you'll be ok. On my old 92SE auto, I flushed the transmission fluid on it at 136k, and I had owned the car since 102k with no prior knowledge of what condition the fluid was in.

 

And while you are at it, add a tranny cooler. It's a good insurance policy, especially for the heat you must experience in a Texas summer.

This link shows you how to add a transmission cooler, and it even shows you which line is the stock tranny cooler return line (which is convenient).

 

If you are not confortable with flushing a transmission, you can do drain and fill every 5KM a couple of times. Then do a full flush. That should be safe for the trans.

 

Man i hope you guys are right, i just dont want to mess up my tranny... is there anyway i can tell whether or not to do the flush by looking at the magnets and screen after i drop the pan? for example if magnet and screen look pretty clean, would that mean a flush would be ok? you guys are making me feel better about doing the flush, but im still not 100% sure.

 

i did mine liek 2 months ago and no problem so far and took away the pan replaced the filter and added new fluid then 1k miles after that i flushed the fluid and added new a my car shift much more better it was ok but now is firmer and my car is 129,000 miles old never been flushed before

 

this may help you out.

http://www.amsoil.com/lit/filter_man_council01.pdf

 

I still dont get why we shouldnt flush it if we never had flushed it regularly before. Anyone know why?

 

Small metal debris and particules floating in the ATF increases friction between bands, and helps reducing transmission slippage. This is why there have been some reports where a full flush with new ATF caused some auto trans to start slipping after that.

 

okay since no one got this I'll take a stab at it.
Example:My motor has 236K on it. Why wouldn't I switch to synthetic? My engine has had 10-30W for as long as I've owned it. I'm sure the previous owner didn't put in synth. So what happens if the next oil change I use synt? My motor will start to hemmorrage oil. I will probably get multipule oil leaks. Why? The 10-30 isn't man made. It has varying particle sizes (bigger pieces of oil parts).

The same applies to the trany. You could put yourself in a world of hurt.

 

i bought my car with 84kml and now its 92kml
i did the full trany flush a couple of weeks ago, and it's like never before! heh i did it in the stealership for $150 damn it!

 

Actually that's a pretty bad analogy. The reason some get leaks is because the synthetic oil cleans the deposits up pretty efficiently and exposes a problem that already exhisted, but wasn't evident.