Now is a good time to show thewayof changing your automatic transmition fluid. There are many facits to this job that require alot of research or the entire tranny can fail.These particular transmitions have internal parts that get very hot, hotter than a regular one. Because of this they need special fluid only available at the dealer for an increased fee. There are 5 quarts of fluid but you can only remove 3 of them at one time. Leaveing the old fluid behind or wasteing new fluid to dilute the old fluid. The book is wrong with its recomendations and even the dealer will let it stay longer than it should. 30,000 mi is the dealer figure.
I prefer to change the 3 quarts every 10-15,000 mi depending on if I am using the trailor during that span. Another thing I found was the special ingrediant that is found in the dealers fluid, only in its own contanior, that way I can even go one step beyond the dealer and add more of the high temp fluid (to regular tranny fluid ie:STP) adding insurance to the expensive high end parts located in the tranny.
And those bottles are seen in the bottle photo.
Next comes the draining of the fluid, if you put the car on a lift you may get less than the 3 quarts that I get when when I tilt the car by jacking it high on the driver side and low on the passenger side. As seen in the second and third photos.
The first time I did the fluid many years ago I found there to be alot of grease on the end of the bolt. Since the dealer did the job I had no way of knowing if they removed the mess or simply left to accumulate. It was the metal fragment wear from the high temp plates being removed with a magnet. (photo) So I did the first one myself @60,000 and then again 80,000 to find the amount you see in the last photo. This tells me that at 30,000 mi the dealer did not remove the grease from the magnet making it less efficient than had they removed it. Hopefully with the added booster fluid there will be even less wear the next time I change the fluid @ 100,000 mi. So that is about it fo now, I dont have more publishable material in the forseeable future but you never can tell when a problem might crop up so keep ckecking.
