Here's Why Changing Your Transmission Fluid Can Cause Damage

rev up your engines before you change your vehicle's transmission fluid you should watch this video because you might use the wrong fluid you might change it incorrectly and you might not even want to change it at all now the first thing i want to do is dispel the myth that modern automatic transmission fluids never need to be changed because they're lifetime fluids load a bunk if you ask a modern engineer they'll say oh it's got lifetime fluid the fluid is good for the lifetime of the transmission but let's say your transmission warranty is 60 000 miles if it breaks after that they don't care they'll sell you another car or another transmission take my old celica it's got like 240 000 miles an hour i change the fluid every 60 000 miles it still runs fine if it would have broken at 60 000 miles i would have strangled somebody but let's say you were a bad boy or girl never changed the fluid you got 180 000 miles on it now if you do change the fluid and filter at that mileage and it's never been touched a lot of times the transmission will start slipping or it won't work at all so you want to do it regularly if it's too far gone pray it lasts as long as possible now this particular vehicle is a 2015 toyota sienna i advise changing it every 60 thousand miles or so and as you can see he's got 77 000 miles on it and he's never changed it but it is a toyota that's okay it's not going to hurt anything so we'll start with the obvious let's look for the dipstick well it's got an oil dipstick but there is no transmission dipstick on this toyota followed all the other fools that got rid of the dipstick mazda did it ages ago it's a stupid design but that's the way it is so you got to deal with what you have they're great vehicles a little glitchy design here's how you do the fluid yourself first you jack the vehicle up in the air you want a jacket so the wheel's up in the air they get a big old jack stand this is changing fluids generally a dirty job putting on these work gloves they're fantastic they're collar length so you really don't get anything dirty now to see what you're doing it's a lot easier taking the tire off well i guess right the second time around and around and around it goes there now once you get under here there's the drain plug right there the drain pan under there this one is the six millimeter hex head so we'll put it on the end of a ratchet they're on pretty tight so you gotta pull pretty hard but eventually ah it breaks loose now we can just do it by fingers and drain it in the pan and there it goes if you notice there's only a little bit in here because there's a trick and that's it you get a long six millimeter hex you reach inside and there's a piece in here that we got to take out now you can see why i'm wearing gloves we keep screwing it you can see it's starting to come out and once we get it out you'll see what happens there comes the bulk of the fluid i'll take this piece out you won't get much of the fluid out but realize even when you take this out only a small percentage of the fluid actually comes out that's why it's a good idea to change it every all 40 50 000 miles because you want to get most of the dirt out and if you keep changing it that'll keep it clean there's still a lot of old fluid in it but it's pretty good fluid now i never ever advise flushing these things out could have all kinds of problems that's why it's a good idea every 40 50 000 miles or so change the fluid you're changing maybe one third of the fluid that's in there but it's very good highly refined fluid that if you do that you're going to get most of the crud out and of course the bolts on the bottom any of the sludge in here is going to come out now it's never going to stop dripping completely so when it's almost done like this then you screw this in flush and realize it's a plastic piece you don't want to break it so once you'd feel it bottoming out like this just give it a tiny little bit that's good enough you can reuse the gasket as long as it's cleaned they last a long time you want to do it finger tight finish it off with the ratchet so it doesn't leak but since there's no dip stick at all how do you put it back in well you got to take this crap off that's why we took the wheel off we got to take this plastic stuff off this one bolts off kind of rusty been sitting there a while oh yeah things on there tight i still can't even turn under my fingers you're there i'm getting weak there now this is those stupid plastic things you push him in hear him click then hope he should come off at least in theory i did and there's the fill plug right there which happens to be 24 millimeters now these can be often stinkers to get off so i got a long little extension bar here i got it loose now the next question is what kind of fluid do you use well you can always go get the dealer one you know they're gonna have the right one for it but in this case if you look it up it says it takes toyota ws well i've been using valvoline for a while when you look at the back and as you can see here it says toyota lexus blah blah blah blah ws so this works for the ws now since it has no dipstick how do you know how much to put back in well this one's easy because it's my son's car it's never been touched it's got the right amount of fluid in to begin with but you want to look at the transmission first you can see this baby's bone dry it's not leaking if it's leaked out then it's going to be a real job trying to figure out how much to put in so if you think your transmission's low on fluid you want to pay a mechanic to do this job i got special tools for measuring the temperature of the transmission go through a whole series of nonsensical things to make sure it's filled correctly but if the transmission is dry especially if you're the original owner all you got to do is this here's what came out of the transmission not sure it's a pain and i yearn for the olden days too when you can have a dipstick to measure it but that's what they've all gone through so you get a bottle do it in a bucket so if you spill some you won't make a mess see how much comes out let's check it see if it's starting to get full that's 700 milliliters so we'll pour this in there and measure the rest because i know it won't spill because there's less than a quart left and we measured the rest 650 milliliters so that's 350 milliliters now the bottle is 946 so we'll put in a whole bottle and we'll use this handy dandy pump we just stick one end in here nice hot fits in that goes in there and the other end of the pump goes in here and we'll pump it all out yeah as you can see starting to flow then when this one's empty then we'll just pour 404 milliliters back in here to fill it up that's how these clear bottles come in handy you can pour the right amount in my advice is don't get a full one and guess empty some of the full one out get it till it's set the right amount you need so when you pump it you just pump until it's empty and you don't guess and accidentally put too much in yeah we'll get back to pumping here these are handy little pumps they don't cost much and they work great i got this one at autozone works perfectly fine now you notice some of the fluid is dripping out that's another way to show you that it's full when it starts dripping out it's full so we measured it correctly and stick it on here first we'll get it finger tight it's already got the gasket you can use it over it's an aluminum gasket they basically last forever then get your big old bar stick it on but once you finally get on then nice and tight soap won't come off don't worry about getting it off next time because with this giant bar it will always snap off put this plastic thing back on and what you do is you push these so they set back out now they're set for going in so you can just line them up you go in a hole when you twist them and then when you push it snaps in place same thing with the bottom one you got to do a little twisting sometimes to get them in a hole because they're old and brittle there we go and then you push it locked and placed of course this should tighten up with a wrench once you get it finger tight then don't forget to put the wheel back on there's always one missing it always happens that way and now we'll get them on snug with this but you don't want to use the impact wrench to put it together just use it to take it apart you need a torque wrench to do it right now you're taking a jack stand out and we get our torque wrench in this case it's about 75 pounds so we'll go to 470 one two three four five and we'll let it down and now we'll finish the job correctly so the wheels are on right you just keep turning it till it clicks there's one you go opposite sides two three four always double check your work there and it's done now realize this 2015 sienna has a six-speed automatic transmission a conventional automatic transmission many cars these days have cvt transmissions and those constantly variable transmissions it's even more important that they have their fluid changed regularly if i owned one but i don't but if i did i would change the fluid every 30 000 miles you can see it's not a hard job to do i would much rather spend the time to do that every 30 000 miles than to have the transmission go out take a nissan jackal automatic transmission those are horrendous if you don't change it they'll come apart faster they'll probably break anyways but at least you get longer life if you change the fluid in them so now you know the truth about automatic transmission fluid changing so you can take care of your car and make it last as long as possible and believe me do it yourself i've met people who paid shops to do it and they either did it wrong or didn't even change the fluid do it yourself do it right so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 2,246,904

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, automatic transmission, can changing transmission fluid cause problems, changing transmission fluid, how to change transmission fluid, how to check transmission fluid, transmission fluid, transmission fluid change, transmission fluid check, transmission flush vs drain, what transmission fluid should i use, when should you change your transmission fluid, here's why

Id: yUfOdsZLoCs

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021