Here's Why Lifetime Transmission Fluid Is A Total Scam & How I Restored My Trans For Cheap! DIY!

hey everybody welcome back to another episode of legit streetcars my name is Alex I hope that you guys are doing awesome and in today's video we have two goals and two goals only first of all we need to fix a really weird transmission problem with my 2005 III 20 CDI and secondly we're gonna try and make this thing shift faster as well we're also going to do some transmission preventive maintenance some transmission preventive repairs I'm going to show you three parts that cost like 50 bucks that fix a bunch of different transmission problems oh and we're gonna talk about why lifetime transmission fluid is total BS alright I guess that's a little bit more than two goals but what are you gonna do alright we have a ton to cover in this video so we're gonna kick this off with my weird transmission issue this is a problem that you guys may have and you might not even know it take a look at this that is not a shift that's the 1 to 2 shift that's 2 to 3 so basically in first gear the converter is supposed to be slipping a little bit but not fully engaging and what we're getting is a very harsh engagement of the torque converter clutch if you have to take a look at that footage again but it totally feels like we're getting a very harsh 1 to 2 shift right before the actual 1 to 2 shift and this only happens when it's cold outside when the engine gets up to operating temperature this issue totally goes away so all of you guys who live in much warmer climates than I do here in Chicago may not ever detect this problem at all before we get into what I really really hope is the repair here's a little bit about torque converter lockup to understand how a torque converter locks up let's take a look at how a torque converter works a torque converter goes in between the engine and transmission much like a clutch and flywheel assembly the engine side of the converter houses the impeller which is spun by the engine and acts as a pump while the transmission side of the converter houses a turbine the fluid is pumped by the impeller into the turbine blades and creates a fluid coupling which in turn spins the transmission and moves your car now there is always some slip with a fluid coupling because it's not physically locked together and that disconnect is needed much like a manual transmission needs to be able to release or slip the clutch to get moving you can't have an engine and transmission directly connected until the vehicle is in motion once at speed locking the impeller and turbine together causes a direct drive and can help increase fuel economy since there's no loss of power going from the engine to the transmission since there's no more slip this also decreases transmission fluid temperature as well this is all done using a clutch inside of the torque converter that is applied with pressurized transmission fluid sent through a solenoid the clutch connects the impeller and turbine so they spin at the same speed and thus creates a one-to-one direct drive and all is good with the world now the problem with the CDI could be the torque converter which would require me to drop the entire transmission and spend a lot of money on a torque converter but it can also be this guy right here the torque converter clutch damper valve I'll talk to you guys about this in a minute but this car is actually supposed to partially engage the torque converter clutch in first gear and this you guessed it dampens that application let's go rip the valve body out and get into this and all these other parts that I'm replacing too [Applause] [Music] alright guys we're ready to work on this guy our valve body and what you just saw in the time-lapse was maybe 15 minutes worth of work a half hour if you're working on your back don't be intimidated by taking the valve body out or replacing any of the parts that you're gonna see in today's video because you guys can definitely do this at home and save yourself thousands of dollars now what I wanted to briefly mention was Mercedes did design this particular car in this transmission to partially lockup in first gear and I believe every other forward gear and the reason for this is the same reason why any torque converter would lock up it's for efficiency purposes now the reason why they have it partially lock-up and not fully engaged is very similar to why you just don't drop the clutch in your manual transmission car when you're trying to take off from a stop sign gently you could stall the engine it can die out the same thing can happen here or at the very least you're gonna get a very harsh engagement like I'm seeing with my car alright guys let's talk parts and then we're ripping right into our valve body we're gonna start off with some normal transmission maintenance work and I got a really nice kit from FCP euro the king of the lifetime warranty and you got a couple options with this kit you can go with your normal basic transmission maintenance option which includes your fluid filters is a factory mercedes-benz filter some fluid and of course you get your pan gasket seal for the bolt and then your cap for the dipstick tube so right there is a normal transmission service but if you want to do a little bit more and I highly recommend this if you're gonna drop the valve body you should replace your conductor plate this part fails all the time on these cars it's basically a circuit board for the shift solenoids but it also houses a speed sensor that fails and this will put your car into limp home mode so it'll be stuck in like third gear and that's no fun so I will put some codes some trouble codes down below so if your car's in limp home mode or you have a check engine light on check those codes out if you have them you probably got a bad conductor plate at the same time you're definitely gonna want to replace this seal these little o-rings leak all the time this thing just fits in like that so this is another kit that you can get from FCP gyro with the conductor plate the fluid the filter and everything and speaking of fluid I've used factory mercedes-benz fluid I've use this stuff I have used this I've had good luck with all of them so just pick your and stick with it next we have something that could be a total lifesaver the Sonax overlap sleeve kits so you get three of these sleeves right here and some or ings this goes in the valve body which I'm going to show you here in a minute these parts are about 50 bucks I got them from FC Piero as well and these can fix a whole bunch of different issues like a slipping transmission a bump flare in a shift and also a shuttering torque converter so definitely definitely consider doing these sleeves if you have the valve body out anyway because you got to drop this to replace those next up we have our torque converter clutch damper kit I'm hoping I'm crossing my fingers say a prayer do a dance whatever you got to do I'm hoping that this fixes our issue so we don't have to do a torque converter possibly here we go here we go let's see if this is fixed fingers crossed but this kit includes our valve our sleeve are spraying couple o rings in a c-clip and of course detailed instructions so all this stuff you're going to see comes with very nice instructions that you're definitely going to want to follow now I got this kit off of Amazon and actually buy a ton of car parts and tools off of Amazon so if you guys haven't already check out my Amazon garage which is linked in the description box of every one of my videos moving along this is a trans go shift kit right here now I've used trans go shift kits in the past and they do make the transmission shift harder and quicker but I called trans go on this one and these aren't actually modified parts these are factory replacement parts now there's nothing wrong with that but I don't believe that this is going to make a massive difference in how quick or how firm the shift is it's basically just gonna restore the factory shift quality mostly by way of this guy right here which is our pressure regulating valve so after a couple hundred thousand miles this valve could be worn out and it could be decreasing your line pressure so we're gonna get a fresh valve in there comes with a lubricator valve as well a sleeve and a couple of springs that commonly break so this is an excellent idea if you want to just kind of freshen up the valve body it kind of goes along the same theme as the Sonax overlap sleeve kit and in fact this kit does come with its own version of these sleeves but they don't come with the o-rings and the o-rings kind of help seal the fluid in and I'll show you here in a minute what I'm talking about but I like to buy this kit and the one separately I got the trans go shift kit from Victory Road performance and completely unrelated to this video check this out they sent me out their new motor mounts I may try these out on the e55 but this is one completely assembled and then they have different inserts depending on the amount of firmness the amount of vibration you want transferred into the cabin and depending on how strong you need your mount to be but honestly I don't think anything is breaking these mounts at all so I'll leave a link and a coupon code to these mounts down below as well last up something that I do believe is gonna help firm up the shifts on this just a little bit guys this transmission is never gonna be like a dual clutch automatic or anything remotely close to a modern automatic but I'm hoping this will help out this is a tuned transmission control module from race IQ so basically he can increase the line pressure the shift firmness he can mess around with the RPM of the shift and basically make this transmission shift a little bit quicker or basically as quick as it can shift so we'll be installing this as well so I'm hoping that a combination of all of this stuff right here well not the motor mounts yet will hopefully make this transmission shift quicker and get rid of our really weird problem all while doing some normal maintenance that we should be doing anyway [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right guys we're tackling the torque converter clutch dampening valve spring and sleeve first and this is the only reason why we had to separate the valve body halves the updated part comes with a little c-clip here that gets installed right in here so you do have to take this top portion off now I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about cleanliness and lifetime fluids so obviously we're working in a very clean environment we're using a brand new plastic bag here we're not using any rags or anything like that either now another awesome step that you guys can do if you see that you have really dirty fluid or your valve body has just kind of gummed up with anything at all is you can clean this you can basically disassemble it all clean it out with some brake clean let it air dry and that's not a bad idea if it's dirty in my case it doesn't look too bad so we're not gonna do that but I wanted to talk to you guys about why lifetime transmission fluid is total BS now this valve body is not the best example because it's in decent condition but I think you guys will get the idea let's take a look inside of this bore see all those little score marks in there some score marks are normal after many many years of use but if you're not changing your transmission fluid for the entire life of the car because it's vented to the atmosphere you are gonna get dirt and debris there's gonna be clutch material that just normally wears out and it's going to basically scuff up all of these bores and there's quite a few bores and pathways in the valve buddy and this can lead to all sorts of issues which is why with Sonax they do include these little rings here to kind of make sure that that bore is sealed and in some cases valve body replacement is necessary because all that dirt and debris has basically completely destroyed the aluminum so why do auto manufacturers claim that transmission fluid is a lifetime to sell more cars it's plain and simple if an auto manufacturer can sell you a car that you think doesn't require that much maintenance you're gonna buy that car you don't want to spend any more money than you have to in considering how people just basically throw cars away after a few years this kind of only affects us who buy these used car bargains after they've depreciated down to almost nothing now clutch packs and Hertz in the transmission sure you can go a long time with the same fluid but what gets affected our valve bodies and valves and passages and what happens is they leak then they could cause your clutches to slip which in turn can break your transmission also you're not going to find many of these individual parts at the dealership if you come in there with a car with a hundred thousand miles or really anything they're not going to sit there and fiddle around with your valve body they're most likely going to quote you on an entire new valve body or an entire new transmission for thousands of dollars so that is the truth with a lifetime fluid I don't agree with it at all and kind of a general blanket statement if your car says lifetime transmission fluid just change the fluid in the filter about every 50,000 miles and your transmission should last a lot longer [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so we're replacing the three for overlap sleeve and a little bit of a surprise it looks like someone's probably already done that trans go shift kit because these look to be the sleeves that come with that kit notice they don't have an o-ring like the ones with a so next kit so I'm gonna go ahead and replace all of these anyway although these probably work okay but I do like the o-ring design a little bit better so you slide that in there then you roll this on a table something flat Lube it up and put it right back together and in this case we're going to be reusing the valve and the spring [Music] alright guys we are almost done with this valve body and then we're gonna put it back in the car and go for a ride so kind of nervous a little excited not gonna lie but I just wanted to show you a couple things here I don't believe that the trans gokit has been done because this does not have the updated pressure regulator valve as you can see here this is completely different than our new one same goes with the lubrication valve this is the totally old design which is just a valve in a spring and we're installing a sleeve a new spring and then another sleeve right here so just wanted to show you guys that this part is super easy these things just go right in and out and I'm just using regular transmission fluid to lubricate them and that's it let's wrap this thing up [Music] alright guys sorry just one more thing before we get to putting this in the car and going for a test drive and that is in the trans go kit they do give you a couple of springs that you should replace because these Springs can break and by the way you should check all of the springs to make sure they're not cracked so in this case we have a new spring for the two three shift valve which is right this one right here so we're gonna take this one out and just pop in our new red spring like this very very easy and then on the other side of the valve body we gotta pop a plate off and replace this one with an updated white spring and then also here is one of the other overlap sleeves you can see it's also worn I'm not saying this is abnormal but you could just imagine that parts like this that moved back and forth in very tight tolerance bores could get worn out a lot quicker if you don't change that transmission fluid so lifetime transmission fluid I don't think so [Music] [Music] pack put the filter on totally forgot one bolt is on the ground always double check how many bolts you put in your valve body that's probably important and we are torquing everything of course that will put torque specs down below for you guys and a link to some workshop manuals if you guys want to learn how to do all sorts of stuff on your car [Music] all right guys it is super early the next morning I wrap this car up yesterday got it up to operating temperature set the transmission fluid checked it for leaks and all is good and I also drove this car to work yesterday and let me tell you it feels amazing the transmission shifts like brand-new and I've experienced this in the past when replacing the Sonax overlaps leaves and other valves in the valve body is that it's basically like doing a minor restoration to your transmission the shift quality is much improved it has a lot better engagement it's just a very smooth transmission after this and it honestly just feels like a brand new car also the responsiveness is awesome the down shifts are a lot faster I think that part has to do with the tune but so far I'm very happy with our little restoration that we did we also did all the maintenance as well so this transmission is all set except we still have to check to see if the torque converter is harshly locking up in first gear remember it's supposed to lock up in first gear but you're not supposed to notice it as much and the reason why we're waiting until the next day to test this is once the transmission gets a little bit of heat into it the issue kind of goes away so it's been sitting for six hours it's 20 degrees out we should have no issue duplicating this concern if it still exists so fingers crossed let's go for a ride all right guys here we go here we go let's see if this is fixed fingers crossed let's do this no no I put it in manual first you see that shift hang on let's do this again all right so this is an excellent way to test for this just put it in first it shouldn't feel like it's shifting at all and it's still doing it although this is a million times better it actually feels kind of normal my other diesel does this a little bit as well I mean it is supposed to lock up and first but before we were getting a very harsh engagement it would jerk the whole car it honestly felt kind of broken so let's test this out a couple more times all right so I'm gonna take off with a little bit more throttle and it does not happen so I mean honestly you really have to be just hitting the gas just barely for this to happen so honestly under most driving circumstances this really is not a big deal it goes away once the transmission warms up just a little bit so hang on let me warm this up and I'll show you guys what it does once it's just got a little bit of heat into it all right we're at full engine operating temperature I've driven just a couple miles oh yeah it's gone it's totally gone 100% and honestly it would not go away this quickly before we did all of the work so we've made a massive improvement and I have reset adaptations by simply just disconnecting the battery for about an hour so there is a possibility that this completely goes away even when the engine and the transmission are totally cold but it's like 17 degrees out this is kind of a worst-case scenario and after just a few minutes in just a couple miles to three miles the problem is completely gone so I'm pretty happy with this all right guys I've slowed down a little bit on the highway to kind of show you what the transmission shifts like with the tune so check this out so it down shifts a lot quicker and it does shift a little bit faster than it did before but guys don't expect anything too crazy these torque converter transmissions can only shift so fast but this is a major improvement in drivability I do like the responsiveness and how quickly it down shifts now compared to before this transmission was very very slow before so this is a very nice improvement okay so here's what I'm thinking on the torque converter clutch lock-up issue because it still does technically exist although it is vastly improved after putting that damper valve in there before when it engaged it was a very harsh engagement it almost felt like the car was broken my wife noticed it and now I don't think anyone would notice this at all but it is still technically there and this is what I'm thinking I'm gonna talk to Tony at race IQ and see if he can just tune out the engagement of the torque converter clutch in first gear all together because to be honest with you I don't even know why it does this this is the first transmission that I'd ever heard of locking up in first gear I don't think it's doing much for efficiency especially on a CDI the thing is just so efficient anyway so if he can tune it out I'm gonna go that route other than that I'm probably not gonna do much about it to be honest with you I plan on adding a lot more horsepower and torque to this car so chances are in probably the next few months I'll need to remove this transmission to either beef it up or fix something maybe these things are kind of strong we'll see and at that point I will take the torque converter out and replace it or have it rebuilt I spoke to sew necks and although the TCC damper kit that I put in the car is meant to fix this exact problem there is another possibility which is internal leakage inside of the torque converter so as things heat up and expand that leak goes away and that's why the transmission is basically fixed after it gets to up to operating temperature so that's what I'm thinking let me know what you guys think in the comment section down below other than that I am super happy with everything we've done to this transmission we knocked out a bunch of preventive maintenance a bunch of preventative repairs it ships faster it's more responsive and it honestly it just feels like brand new especially once it gets up to operating temperature so I really can't complain for the little bit of money I've spent on this transmission so comment down below if you guys had any really weird transmission problems have you fixed them at home for not a lot of money and not spent a couple thousand dollars at the dealer just throwing a transmission or throwing a torque converter at it immediately without looking at anything else I've seen that happen for sure let me know in the comments section with that being said I hope you guys really enjoyed this video I'm doing the thumbs up thing a little early hit the thumbs up button if you haven't already subscribe if you're new share the video and most importantly change your transmission fluid lifetime transmission fluid is total BS and have a fantastic day I'll see you all in the next video [Music]

Channel: LegitStreetCars

Views: 405,571

Keywords: Lifetime Transmission fluid, mercedes transmission issue, automatic transmission, bad transmission, burnt fluid, legitstreetcars cdi, turbo diesel mercedes, lifetime fluid myth, transmission flush, tr

Id: LdF5DnGwz7E

Length: 24min 46sec (1486 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 02 2019