When a Transmission Fluid Change or Flush Can Damage Your Transmission

you should never do an automatic transmission flush you should never not do an automatic transmission flush you should also never say never hey do-it-yourselfers so as evident by the comments section on my previous video where I told you how you can best maintain your car it's obvious that there's a lot of confusion about when or if you should flush your automatic transmission so there's a yes and no and it may be answer to this question and I got three of my cars with different mileage and different maintenance history on them which should allow me to explain this more thoroughly so basically today we will have some answers regarding this question now before we start do me a favor and subscribe to my channel but also click on the bell notification that's right next to the subscribe button because YouTube will not let you know when a new video is out unless you click on that so first let's talk about when you should never flush your automatic transmission fluid or in fact even replace any of your automatic transmission fluid and that's when your car currently has automatic transmission issues so if your transmission is already slipping maybe kicking into gear or changing gears when it's not supposed to flushing the transmission fluid or replacing any of the transmission fluid is only gonna make it worse so that's for two reasons one being that maybe your transmission is slipping because the clutch backs are worn out now if the clutch backs are worn out beyond a certain point it also means that the old clutch material is also still floating in the transmission fluid and at the same time it's still helping a little bit with your clutch packs engaging and connecting now if you take the old transmission fluid out put new transmission fluid in there the new transmission fluid is not gonna have that gritty old clutch material in it and your transmission is actually going to start slipping even more and the other reason is all transmission fluids come with additives now some of these additives have cleaning characteristics for obvious reasons they want to make sure that your transmission can pretty much clean itself out whether a part is wearing out you wants to be able to collect those particles get it to the oil pan area where it can be collected by your transmission fluid filter now the problem is when you put new fluid in there with new additives it's going to do a really good job but it's going to clear out crud and particles from one corner and move on maybe to another corner or clean out a very old dirty transmission and all of a sudden clog things up and then you're going to have more problems not less problems now you can pretty much verify a transmission that has internal problems by checking your transmission fluid so yeah you know your transmission oil dipstick and smell the fluid now people say if it smells burnt it's a bad sign but in my experience they just smells really awful as in you smell it in you know that happens you bump your head against the hood now the other sign is if you have really dark transmission fluid now I don't know how well you guys gonna be able to see this but this transmission fluid is in really good shape it's not dark at all and it looks pretty close to a new transmission fluid and as you know new transmission fluid is supposed to look pink white in small amounts on your skin it'll actually look pretty clear now pretty much the only choice you have with a transmission that's kicking and slipping and your verified that it's an internal issues is to remove one quart of transmission fluid from your transmission and add one quart of Lucas stop slip transmission oil to your transmission cross your fingers and hope for the best and unfortunately that rarely works as well because when a transmission fails due to an internal components like the clutch packs being physically damaged and worn out no amount of transmission fluid flushes or fluid replacements is going to fix that your only bet is fad that lucas oil and maybe that oil will either clean something out or add a bit more grit and hopefully your clutch bags can engage easier all right now another situation where you should not do a transmission flush is to get your transmission flushed at a shop because if you do it a shop they use a machine that they've used on hundreds of cars and they remove your transmission lines usually and hook that machine up to your transmission lines now hooking that machine up to where your transmission cooler lines go and itself is not a problem but the problem is that they use that machine again on hundreds of cars before they got to your car now that that machine might have a different type of automatic transmission fluid or worse yet have dirt and debris and worn-out material from the previous transmission they service and if that gets inside your transmission is going to cause even more problems also another problem is some of these shops use additives to either add with the new transmission fluid to your transmission or use it to clean out your transmission and in my opinion those cause more problems than necessary your normal transmission fluid again has cleaning additives that should be adequate alright so actually cover when to never do a transmission flush now let's go on and move to when you can do a transmission flush so that brings us to my 2001 Dodge Ram we about 61 thousand miles on the clock but it doesn't have just low miles it also has and that's for a fact because I did it myself no one record when it comes to maintaining the transmission when I bought this car about a year and a half ago it had just above 50,000 miles I think and that's when I decided to do a transmission fluid flush and if we were to check the transmission fluid on this truck again you can hopefully see that the fluid on this truck is also in nice clean shape so yeah if we were to do a transmission fluid flush on this truck with the known maintenance records and no problems with the transmission on this car nothing is going to happen due to the flush to the transmission on this car now if you do decide to flush your transmission make sure the manufacturer of your car doesn't prohibit that first second I recommend that you do it earlier then the manufacturer gives the interval for replacing the fluid and filter for example you know like on this truck let's say it's every 50,000 miles for fluid and a filter replacement make sure if you decide to not just do that but also do a flush to do it every 40,000 miles this way crud doesn't build up inside your transmission and therefore you know all the new transmission fluid is not going to knock that loose and plug things up and here's a fun fact for you on this transmission if you were to replace the transmission fluid you would have to drop the oil pan now if you drop the oil pan and just replace the oil that's inside the oil pan that's only about 2 quarts where the entire transmission on this truck uses about 6 quarts and that's obviously because a lot of that oil is inside your torque converter and other parts of the internals of your transmission obviously so yeah on this car the oil inside the pan it's only about a third of the transmission oil that your transmission uses on some cars it might be as high as 50 or 60% and some cars it might be as even as low as a quarter now if you do decide to do a DIY transmission flush here's how you do it you first add a quart to your transmission through the dipstick tube we then disconnect the transmission line that's coming from your transmission and take soil to your transmission cooler and another host to that and put the other end in a bucket then you get in your car start the engine and then put the transmission in neutral and wash the transmission pump out transmission fluid and you stop the car when a pumps out about a quart of oil and then you keep adding fluid one quart at a time through the dipstick and then turn on the engine and use it to pump out the old transmission fluid through that and you do this until clean transmission fluid comes out of that hose and that's the only way to do a transmission flush and again it should be done on a car with the right qualifications all right so now let's get to the maybe part or the maybe answer hand we'll use this car in this car this being a 2009 Pontiac g3 this being in 2004 GMC Yukon the Yukon has 190,000 miles and I have no maintenance records on this car with the transmission fluid as we saw earlier looks pretty good actually now the Pontiac g3 has a dead battery but take my word for it it has 160,000 miles and again no maintenance records on this either as far as the condition of the transmission fluid well let's see all right yeah as you can see it's kind of on the darker side there's worn but it doesn't smell bad or empty all right so when it comes to these two cars I don't recommend doing a transmission fluid flush at all because first there is no maintenance records on this for example this car at hundred six thousand miles they may never have had its transmission serviced it may never have had either flush or even a fluid and filter replacement and now you put that new transmission fluid in there it's gonna you know clean things out knock things loose get some dirt debris from one corner plug up something else caused some problems that were in there to begin with and again same thing goes for this truck because again we don't know the maintenance records on the transmission and also given the miles a transmission fluid flush is not recommended however these two cars are in the maybe section because you know even though we don't know that maintenance record on this truck the fluid doesn't look that bad so the transmission was probably serviced at some point not too long ago now you could roll the dice and do it transmission fluid flush on this truck you know there's a 7080 percent chance nothing will actually happen actually that transmission fluid flush will help prolong the transmission life on this car but there's a 20 30 percent chance that given the miles on this truck and the unknown maintenance history on this truck maybe they just did one transmission service at hundred and you know 60,000 miles before that day they didn't do anything now you do a complete transmission fluid flush you know some of that old debris and dirt from the old you know the much packs and stuff that was in one corner that can get knocked loose and then plug things up and cause transmission problems however on both of these cars you should be fine just replacing the transmission fluid that's inside the transmission oil pan with the oil filter and nothing bad is gonna happen again that's given you don't already have transmission issues however there's a scenario where I don't even recommend replacing the oil that's inside the oil pan and that is let's say on this truck where it almost has 200,000 miles you check the oil you obviously have no maintenance records and you check the oil and you see that the oil is really dark now even though the truck or the car might not have transmission issues and I recommend replacing the bit of oil that's inside the pan even though again it might be only twenty or thirty percent of the oil that your transmission uses but even by doing that you run the risk of you know knocking you know debris and dirt loose inside the transmission moving things around and then causing things to plug up and then you might actually start again having transmission problems where you don't have any before so that was on whether or not you should flush your transmission or not now if you're wondering how you can maintain your engine and make sure it lasts for a very long time I recommend you watch this video I put a link to it too in this corner you can click on that or you can watch this video as well don't forget to subscribe and hit that Bell notification and I'll see you guys next time thanks for watching

Channel: Ratchets And Wrenches

Views: 766,928

Keywords: RnW, should you do a transmission flush, can changing your transmission fluid cause damage, here's why changing your transmission fluid can cause damage, how to fix a slipping transmission, how to do a transmission flush, should you replace the transmission fluid on an old car, will lucas stop slip oil fix a transmission, how to super flush your transmission, when should your replace transmission fluid, why you should never flush your transmission, transmissions that last long time

Id: p-CCAR5HK-0

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 27 2018