Here’s What Happens If You Change Lifetime Transmission Fluid in Your Car

rev up your engines people are always asking me about cvt transmissions are they any good do they last well this is a six-year-old honda civic with a cvt i'm going to change the fluid today we're going to analyze the whole thing to see what shape it is on my computer how it drives once we change it now it's very important that you change the fluid in these things regularly because when you do change the fluid only a small portion of all the fluid in the transmission comes out a lot of guys are going to try to sell you a flush job do not flush them if you flush out a transmission there's all kinds of nooks and crannies and little holes and if there's any dirt you can ram it into there i've seen them get flushed they don't even move after they're flushed you just want to drain what you can and fill and above all don't listen to the idiots at the dealership that say oh it's a lifetime fluid you never need to change it that's bunk i asked them one time i said how dare you say that they said what's a lifetime flu it's good for the lifetime of the transmission then i said what's the lifetime of the transmission and they said well we guarantee it for 60 000 miles i hope it lasts longer than that right so they're just saying oh don't change the fluid when the transmission breaks just get another transmission stupid advice all fluid gets dirty over time we'll get more friction we'll wear things out so you do want to change it in the case of these i advise every maybe 35 40 000 miles change they're not crap like the ones that nissan makes the jatco ones honda makes one of the best two honda and toyota one and two with cvt transmissions so they're good transmissions but you want to take care of now when you see how easy it is to change the fluid in this thing today you'll gladly do it yourself and take my advice do it yourself i have seen people who paid mechanics to do it they screwed up they either put in too much fluid or not enough and it destroyed these transmissions cost thousands and thousands to replace or repair just open the hood the transmission side there's the front of the engine there's a transmission here now we're going to jack this side i'll jack it up here on the jack point there and stick a jack stand on there of course they've gone bananas with modern cars so we got to take these stupid splash pans off or a drain pan in you notice this should fit right on rather than kill myself pull on the stupid thing i just use a large hammer you heard it pop that means it's loose you can use your finger to get it off now it's simple and what you want to do is have it in an empty drain plan and let it go might take five minutes they have little magnets on it as you can see it's a tiny tiny amount of metal filing see them standing up here and that's black don't freak out that's totally normal on one of these this one's never been touched it's never been changed this is the original factory stuff and that little bit of metal filings that's normal now if they're big tall giant gloppy ones yeah this just goes to show why you gotta change the fluid and not say it's lifetime fluid cause there's pieces in there and you'll want to get them out it's just observed that these clowns say you never have to change them you can see there are metal filings on there you definitely want to change it now we're measuring what comes out and we'll put the same exact back in because i could show you on my phone my all data system but there is a gigantic step-by-step process to correctly check the fluid this isn't like the old ones that you put the dipstick in it doesn't work that way this thing is new enough it's never been changed the transmission itself is bone dry there's nothing leaking on the outside so we know it's full of fluid we'll measure what comes out put that same amount back in it's that simple now let's say you have one that's older and it's all wet fluid had been leaking you screw then you're gonna have to pay a guy like me with our fancy computers and our data systems to change it out and then fill it up and it'll take hours and you can pay a whole bunch of money that's why you want to change it every 35 40 000 miles to keep it clean so it doesn't leak anything out so you have to deal with any of that crap now we got to put the fluid back in you look up there you'll see up there sockets on it but get off the other one that's the hole where we're gonna pump the fluid back in you can see the funnel fits down in there the top down we won't have to get a pump and pump the stupid thing first we're gonna pour one cord in they're gonna use this to measure what's in there so we'll know exactly how much to put in don't trust any of the books many of them lie oh we'll pour one cord in and make sure you do what he did i told him to bring it honda genuinely bought it as a dealer do not mix fluids in particular is very particular especially honda now that we got one cord and we got an empty one so there's the old dirty fluid and you can see look at it it's dirty you saw how clear the other one was it's pretty dirty keep pouring till this one's full you look in the top and see when it gets close you can also look in the side all right it's up to the top here now this one's full so that's one and we put one in now normally i pour the old oil in my old oil gasoline can that said old oil but my son stole it for his boat so i'm using this naked whey gallon to put the old oil take it to the recycling center as number two we'll throw that in for all the rest in this because it won't take it off now i'm having a hard time reading it so here's a trick get a flashlight and shine in the top then you can read the side better in this case it stops right at 28 ounces it's just about three whole quarts see the nonsense about it being a lifetime flood look how dirty that stuff is it's dirty it's really dirty and it's only 50 000 miles of driving believe me you're better off changing it every 35 40 000 miles buy the fluid at the dealer learn how to do it yourself like this then you don't have to worry about somebody screwing it up putting in cheaper fluid you'll do it right now since we don't want to forget we'll put the 28 ounces in first and as you can see look how much cleaner that stuff is that's it for that one well before a little tiny bit left i'm gonna put the last quart and that'll be exactly what came out is going in oh here goes the last quarter i will crawl under put the bolt in the washer back on first you get it on finger tight and put a socket on it and get it snug and then just a little bit more so it won't leak put the stupid pan back on i hate these things now we're going to take it for a road test but first we're going to let down put my fancy scanner on it just to see what kind of shape the transmission and car is in this case it's a cinch it's just right there plug it in the left kick panel on goes the scanner and we'll start her up then on the ac2 it's getting really hot out here and we'll get some stuff going here intelligent diagnosis a lot faster with a more modern car like this it knows what it is we'll do diagnosis and we'll do a smart scan it's going to go through everything on the car see look at all the stuff on the screen this baby's going through it is going through a ton of stuff there's no way a human being could do that without spending days or weeks or months modern vehicles gotta have moderate equipment to diagnose them there's no way out of it which is a big reason if you buy one of these used like this guy did to have a guy like me check it out not just some clown with a little scan tool but a real tool that goes through every system all of these different systems all of them and so far so good everything's green grey just means it doesn't have that system on everything's green but we want to look at the transmission because we're curious about the cvt transmission so here we go oh it doesn't have trouble codes but we'll check it anyways no trouble codes so we will go to data stream check out the data screen we'll select all 65 parameters now the only trip trouble codes when they go too far off 20 25 plus or mind so it could be bad data that's on its way out but didn't trip a code so we're going to look at all of them blue is good data these are color coded too there's all kinds of information on these cvt transmissions they're very complex no data flow i'm going to take it for spin see how it shifts here we go backing up it's got a decent backup camera many civics have gone a long way they are so much more luxurious smoother riding cars than they used to be years ago and you can see now it's not a regular transmission so it doesn't really shift gears we're looking for is if it has too much slippage where you step on the gas and it doesn't accelerate well that's definitely not the case and you might wonder why do they have cvt transmissions well the main thing is because they get phenomenal gas mileage for their size they weigh less and they're cheaper to make in the case of this he's driving on highway 65 he gets 40 miles a gallon so that's pretty good originally i hated these because you step on the gas nothing happened this it accelerates pretty good as far as i'm concerned honda and toyota make the best cvt transmissions in the world they have the least problems better acceleration and phenomenal gas mileage this little civic is the joy of driving the curves but of course it's not a drag strip car speaking of which we're coming up to our little drag strip so we'll stop and we'll see how fast this can take off all right here we go full speed ahead [Music] not bad now it acts like it's shifting gears it doesn't really shift gears but you can see it's exceptionally smooth we didn't get jerkin herky jerky and let me tell you in this 2017 civic the cvt transmission was light years ahead of a lot of its competitors like i say the only other ones that i like are toyota and i happen to like the newer toyotas even better because they have what are called launch gears they actually launch in an actual gear and once they're out of the first launch gear they go into a cvt configuration so they're combo training this isn't that way but really when you need to pass somebody and you step on the gas look it starts getting faster 54 57 60. it's not a dog and it's exceptionally smooth he bought it used it does have 51 000 miles if it would have been changed at 35 or so the fluid wouldn't have been as dirty so that's what i advise doing you can see it's so easy to do just do it yourself and i do have to say look you step on the gas it takes off a lot better than the earlier cvts did they're coming to the point of perfecting them at least honda and toyota are and so the jackco ones not impressed not impressed well we learned that honda knows how to make cvt transmissions in these civics they got power to get gas mileage they're smooth as can be and you've also learned an important lesson you'll want to change the fluid and if you own one of these they are perhaps the easiest to change of any of the cars you've seen some of my toyota videos they're a pain in the rear end to change you got to take crap off that special tools less fluid comes out these are so easy to do do it yourself the transmission will last longer and you'll thank me and you'll thank yourself for using your head and not believing the idiots at the dealer that say i'll leave it alone it's lifetime fluid so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 430,381

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, myth, myth busted, automatic, transmission, transmission fluid, automatic transmission fluid, transmission fluid change, changing transmission fluid, should you change transmission fluid, change fluid, fluid change, mythbusters, automatic transmission, transmission fluid myth, how to change transmission fluid, automatic transmission fluid change, transmission fluid how to

Id: hi4nzS0uOX0

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022