Can Changing your Transmission Fluid Cause Damage?

hey guys chrisfix here and today I'm going to put an end to all the questions and myths surrounding automatic transmission fluid transmissions are pretty expensive and getting a replacement transmission or even a rebuilt transmission could cost you thousands of dollars and rebuilding your transmission is typically not something most people could do at home without special tools and training and for whatever reason people tend to forget about transmission maintenance and it doesn't help that manufacturers are coming out with these sealed transmissions that make maintenance even more difficult no matter what automatic transmission you have the fluid does get hot it breaks down and heat is the number one killer of transmissions now I'm going to cover many different questions you might have and myths you might have heard but if you still have questions on something I didn't cover feel free to leave a comment below so there are three common questions that come up when dealing with the transmission fluid when should you change the transmission fluid in your car can changing the transmission fluid damage my transmission and should I do a transmission fluid flush or change so to answer the first question on when you should change your transmission fluid well check out the owner's manual and right here you can see it says inspect automatic transmission fluid every 15,000 miles but this is for my truck specifically so make sure you check your owner's manual in this 2008 mercury milan it tells you to change the fluid every 60,000 miles not just to inspect it but to change it but again every car is different another way you could tell if you need to change your transmission fluid is inspecting the fluid you want to inspect the transmission fluid straight from the dipstick in your vehicle and if you have a sealed transmission with no dipstick I'll show you how to check that in a second but first let me show you how to check the transmission fluid in a normal automatic transmission with a dipstick in this case we'll be using my Corvette for an example with the engine at operating temperature and the transmission fluid warm that's when you want to check your transmission fluid and the first thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to look for your transmission dipstick you can see here there's the oil dipstick and then if you look back here in this car the transmission dipstick right here I always use a white paper towel so you could get a good idea of what color the transmission fluid is so you can see the transmission fluid goes up to the crosshatch markings over here and that's exactly where you want it you could also see on here it says warm one hundred ninety degrees and then it also has the eighty degrees eighty degrees is when you check it when it's cold 190 s when you check it when it's warm I prefer checking it when it's warm and then on the dipstick it tells you check in park the engine idling vehicle level and the transmission should be high and then should go up to the crosshatch and don't overfill it so just having the dipstick out gives you a ton of information plus we want to look at the color of the transmission fluid on the white paper towel and I'll go over that right now and in this case the vet looks good so let's go check out the fluid inside the garage when inspecting the fluid fluid in good condition should be bright pink and it should look just like this fluid that's starting to wear out and need to be replaced will look darker just like this but it'll still have a slight pink tint to it and fluid from a transmission that hasn't been changed in a long time which actually caused that transmission some damage will smell burnt and look dark just like this and if it's really bad it'll even have metallic specks in it so both checking the owner's manual and checking the condition of the fluid are two ways to know when you should change your transmission fluid but unfortunately it's not always that easy for this Jaguar if we look in the owner's manual you won't find any information on checking or changing the transmission fluid and while looking under the hood there's no dipstick anywhere and the reason why is because Jaguars have sealed transmissions many newer cars like this Ford Fiesta here also have sealed transmissions if you look in the owner's manual there's nothing in here about transmission fluid service and then if we look in the engine compartment you can see there is an no transmission fluid dipstick we have an oil dipstick but that's it let's get the Jaguar on-ramps and I'm going to show you how to check a sealed transmission now I don't like the idea of lifetime fluid because every transmission has vent tubes to allow the pressure in the transmission to equalize over time that breather tube allows moisture and dust to contaminate the fluid I suggest inspecting a lifetime fluid at about a hundred thousand miles to see what condition it's in the good thing is sealed transmissions aren't actually sealed there's a fill bolt and a drain bolt if we look down here in this Jaguar you can see this bolt right there there's a rubber cap on it that's the fill bolt so you take the rubber cap off of that you unscrew it you put your funnel here and you can fill the transmission and when there's a fill bolt there's a drain bolt if we go underneath the car we take a look under here and you can easily see right there is the drain bolt nice big bolt connect to the transmission and then usually there are just two bolts but Jaguar makes it complicated and if we look right here that bolt that's kind of hidden back there that is the fluid level bolt so you unscrew that and if the transmission fluid is filled you'll get a little bit of fluid coming out of there the next question and probably the most common question I get asked is can changing the transmission fluid damage your transmission the easy answer to that is no changing the transmission fluid isn't going to damage any components in your transmission and to show you why this is an oath renew some Maxima transmission that I took apart for you and I laid out all the different components on this bench and if you think about it the condition of these parts is what it is changing the fluid isn't going to change that so these ring gears here these are either in good condition or bad condition the bearings in all these are either in good condition or bad condition the clutch pack in this is either in good condition or bad condition adding fluid isn't really going to change anything and I say isn't really because when dealing with the clutches if your clutches are worn out and your fluid is burnt or damaged and has metallic specks in it odds are your clutches are bad so if you flush out the system and put in this brand-new fluid with none of that clutch material floating around well your transmission might slip I'm going to take this apart right now and show you why so these are the clutch packs that I've been talking about and when an automatic transmission slips this is why these clutch packs wear out and they can't grip now they use fluid pressure to really grip on and then allow you to go into whatever gear you're in 1st 2nd 3rd 4th if you don't change your transmission fluid and it's black like this this transmission fluid doesn't have good lubrication properties and it'll heat up very easily and it'll cause these clutches to wear out and when these clutches wear out your transmission is going to slip if you see little metallic specks in your fluid some of that is clutch material suspended in your fluid so when that fluids in here and there's all that suspended clutch material it might be just enough to help these clutches engage even though your clutches are worn out now if you completely flush your black transmission fluid you're going to have this nice new transmission fluid in there sure provides better lubrication and better heat dissipation but you don't have any of that clutch material suspended in the fluid anymore because you flush that out so now you're worn out transmission might start slipping but that's only going to happen if your transmission fluid is dark if it's burnt if you haven't changed it in a really long time and it's not in this nice good pink condition that we want to see now this brings me to my next question should you change the transmission fluid or should you flush the transmission fluid and the easy answer to that is check your owner's manual in the owner's manual it'll tell you change or flush but what if when you inspect your fluid it's black or has metallic specks in it or if you don't know the service history what should you do a change or a flush before I explain that let me explain the difference between a fluid change and a fluid flush so again here's our transmission and if we're going to do a transmission fluid change there's going to either be a drain bolt under here or we're going to drop this whole pan and then any fluid that's in here is going to get changed out with the transmission fluid change you're changing about 40 percent maybe 50 percent of the fluid the rest of the fluid is all through this transmission and it's not going to leak out and drain there's also a ton of fluid in the torque converter here this is filled with transmission fluid and you're not going to empty that so just like you saw in my recent video where I changed the transmission fluid in my truck the transmission in that truck holds 10 quarts but I only got 4 quarts out now with the transmission fluid flush you're going to remove all the old fluid so all the fluids going to go out you're going to replace it with all brand-new fluid and taking a look back at our transmission how they do the flush is the transmission has lines going out you can see these two lines that were cut so what they'll do at a shop is it attach a hose here and a hose here this line will be going in that line will be going out so the pump new fluid in as the old fluid gets sucked out so if your transmission takes ten quarts they'll pump ten quarts out and fill it ten quarts in so then you get a complete flush now again when you flush the fluid if your fluids in good shape great doing a flush won't cause any problems but if your fluid is burnt and it's old and black like this when you do a flush you could cause a problem in the valve body this is a valve body this is at the bottom of the transmission here's the transmission filter we take this apart and this is what a valve body looks like it's all these little channels that could easily become gummed up and clogged when your transmission fluid is old and burnt and the transmission hasn't had its normal servicing doing a flush is going to add all brand-new fluid and transmission fluid is a really good cleaner so it's going to clean out all the gunk and it could cause these little passages to get clogged up and if these passages get clogged up you're not going to get good shifts and you could lose gears and that is something you don't want to do just for changing the transmission fluid and that's how those myths started where all I changed my transmission fluid now my transmission slips or it won't go in the gear it's because the person's transmission fluid was black and bad just like this but you don't have to worry about that when your transmission fluid is in good shape like this so I want to just do a quick recap make sure you follow your owners manual for either doing a flush or a change it'll tell you what to do in their only flush your transmission if the fluids in good condition if you're unsure about your transmissions condition do a fluid change you can always do another one down the road and getting some good fluid in there is always a good thing and the last thing I want to cover is what transmission fluid should you use and the answer to that is again if you guessed it check your owner's manual we have tons of transmission fluids here different brands and also different types of fluid if you look here we have type F if you look here we have import we have full synthetic synthetic we have merkon v but all these components need a specific transmission fluid if we check out the fluid in my truck my truck requires merkon v so you want to make sure that you use merkon five and nothing else any other transmission fluid is going to damage that transmission these transmission fluids have specific additives viscosities friction modifiers and all that stuff is going to make your transmission run properly hopefully that clears things up about transmission fluid and servicing the transmission there's so much misinformation out there that I wanted to create a reliable source with all the facts in one place as always hopefully this video is helpful if it was remember to give it a thumbs up and if you're not subscribed consider subscribing up on the screen are related videos and to get to those videos you could click 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Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 10,332,186

Rating: 4.9104867 out of 5

Keywords: transmission fluid, changing transmission fluid, tranny fluid, when should you change your transmission fluid, can changing transmission fluid cause problems, what transmission fluid should I use, transmission fluid flush, transmission fluid change, how to change transmission fluid, sealed transmission, automatic transmission, how to check transmission fluid, transmission fluid check, transmission flush vs drain, transmission flush

Id: o690DovjDAc

Length: 10min 57sec (657 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 08 2016