prr

The manual says every 90K (normal conditions, which I qualify for), although every 30 or so (I forget exactly how often) for severe.

My mechanic only changes fluid if it is not dark, and he changed it at 175K.

Now I'm at 198K.

Is this something I should plan on doing at some point soon, or should I just follow the manual and change it in another 90K, at some point around 265K?

Reason why I'm asking is that usually when people do change it, they change it a lot more often than every 90K.

If I'd be best off just going with the OEM recommendations, that's fine by me---less work that way.



BTW I have noticed no problems at all with the shifting.

brags

that's Great to hear. many Profesional technitions i talk to will recommend automatic transmission changes at no later
than 60,000 Canadian kms thats more or less where i would change it out Yeah i get the Honda manual says every
90.000 kilometres but does it take in to consideration city stopn-Go stops or stoped idiling time etc..?

probably Not, there for earlier than normal is always better You no many people will push it well beyond the 90km"s
until the fluid is no good and has damaged the transmission why would anyone do that is beyond me honestly.?
You changed it last at 175,000kms i would do it at 235,000kms

ezone

At my dealer we recommend service ATF every 30k.



The family Hondas I personally care for usually get ATF changed with every other oil change.

prr

That is more often that I'd expect (every other oil change).

Do you find that the trannies last longer than average, with that frequent atf changes?

ezone

Right. Hondas 3 decade track record on automatic transmissions kinda makes some of us to go above and beyond what other people consider normal.

The old timers used to say Honda could build anything except an automatic transmission.
Quite the opposite. Trannys with little or no service tend to have the most problems.
Sometimes they fail regardless of services, but that's usually a different and unavoidable issue.


Fluid is cheap. Replacing a trans is not.

prr

That's what I meant---that you saw trannsmissions that got frequent fluid changes last longer.


OK, I'll set one up for my 205K oil change.



Always appreciate your input.

prr

I found a thread on another forum I go to (BobistheOilGuy.com), dealing with automatic transmissions that have gone 200,000 miles: https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forum...44060&page=all

I decided to look at the posters, and tabulate how often everybody changed their transmission fluid. With some major caveats (see below), I came up with some interesting conclusions.

1. Half of the 72 posters who gave clear info about how often they changed their fluid, changed it more often than 40,000 miles (in other words, they drained the fluid BEFORE it reached the 40,000 mile point). 35 out of 72 were in this category.

2. However, I was also surprised at how rarely some other posters (all of whom went 200K on the original automatic trans) changed it. 4/9 of them, 32/72, changed it no sooner than every 50,000 miles; 13 of those 32, did it either only once, or not at all.

So you can take from that what you will—some have gone 200K on their trans with routine maintenance; but others have hardly touched it, and gone just as long. But the ones who did routine maintenance did outnumber those who hardly every touched their ATF.

Problems here: I started tabulating my data before I realized that there is a major difference between a drain and a flush. I was thinking of an oil drain, where you get out 95% of the oil, but evidently transmission fluid flushes get out a lot more of the original fluid, than a mere drain?

Also, there were two phrases that I didn’t understand. “Drop the pan” and “change the filter.”

I realize that many automatic transmissions have a filter. Does this mean that when you change it, you are draining fluid out, or flushing all of it out? Or is it like simply changing the oil filter, while leaving the rest of the oil in the sump?

Also, “drop the pan”--does that mean a flush or merely a drain?

I realize that this makes a difference, because if there are 9 quarts that are flushed out, but only 3 quarts replaced with a drain, this means that a flush at 90K is like a drain at 30K. I decided to ignore this difference, because I was confused by the terms some of the posters were using, so if I can get some feedback here from you folks, maybe I can go back and re-tabulate the data and see who was doing what (a drain or flush) at what point in time.

Anyways, some interesting thoughts.

One more thing---one of the posters said he worked at a Ford dealership, and at first he thought that all the Tauruses had transmission problems, but then realized that the customers that brought in their cars for a 30,000 mile flush (well, he said it was done with a machine, which would mean a flush, correct?) in his words, “never seemed to have any problems.” So he was backing up what Ezone was stating above, here.

Colin42

Change your fluid unless you feel like buying a new tranny.

Alot of automatic transmissions have a removable pan that holds most of the fluid.

A pan service means dropping the pan, replacing the tranny filter, cleaning the pan and the magnet inside, and then reinstalling the pan, sometimes with a new gasket depending on the tranny. This will get about half the fluid, the rest will be in the torque converter, lines, trans cooler, etc.

A flush connects into the cooler lines and replaces all the old fluid with new, however flushes are not recommended for Hondas.

For Hondas and some other cars a drain and fill service is performed.
The trans case is drained removing about half the fluid, and then the trans is topped up with new fluid. Hondas do a 3x drain and fill. So the service is preformed 3 times with a couple mins of driving (either on the road or on a hoist) in between each drain and fill. This ensures all the fluid gets changed out

prr

The receipt when my mechanic did a "flush" at 175K (it has 198K now) had me charged for 12 quarts of ATF. I suppose that is what he did then.

ezone

Quote:

One more thing---one of the posters said he worked at a Ford dealership, and at first he thought that all the Tauruses had transmission problems, but then realized that the customers that brought in their cars for a 30,000 mile

A good majority of appliance users never service anything until there's a noticeable problem.....and with most automatic trans failures, by the time it has a noticeable problem, it's far too late to begin maintaining it.
This is also where the old wives tale of "if it has more than xx,xxx miles on it do not service the trans or you will ruin it", which is a bunch of bull butter. Fresh fluid alone won't hurt a trans. Ever IMO.


On Hondas, the somewhat common torque converter shudder issue (on 06-13 Civics and various other models and years of Hondas) is usually corrected with fresh and correct trans fluid. The shudder is primarily caused by fluid breakdown, according to my sources.

prr

Since you brought this up, could it be that new fluid alone won't hurt an old trans, but moving all the accumulated gunk in the trans might hurt it? I have read one explanation for the idea of older transmissions failing after a fluid change, being that the fluid change will stir up bits of gunk that had settled in the nether regions of the trans (?), whereas they were harmless before.

Any sense to this?

ezone

For a simple fluid drain and fill? Not really. Even with dropping a pan and replacing the filter on designs that allow it, still no IMO.

The majority of blame comes about because the trans already had problems before someone decided to begin maintaining it......so they blame the service and the last person to touch the car.
"Trans flush places" got sick of losing big money to the idiots that won't take responsibility for their own vehicles neglect so the lawyers write these 'disclaimers' and 'waivers' so the idiots can't sue the shop because the service didn't fix the problem it came in with......which was never disclosed to the shop in the first place.
The people doing the flushes at the lube places aren't transmission specialists, by any stretch of the imagination, so you can't expect any of them to even begin to understand or diagnose any trans problem unless it craps a pile of gears on the parking lot.


In the case of flushes, most flush jockey kits have the flusher pour in a can of solvents to loosen that stuck on varnish and debris (which CAN do what you wonder about), then follow that up with another can of some sort of conditioner installed with the fresh generic ATF fluid......... and sometimes they have to add friction modifiers (check out http://www.lubegard.com), because the generic ATF they used is the cheapest red fluid on the planet and it usually doesn't even begin to meet the specs of anything currently in production. Then if it takes a year or two for the fluid breakdown to start doing its damage, by that time the driver won't associate the new issues with the fluid flush from a couple years ago.

D17VTECPOWER

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dsm482

I changed the fluid every 50k, on my 2005 dx, didnt develop tranny problem till i got 320k just lost reverse a month ago.. it stil has forward.
on my family cars newer honda and toyotas i got i do 30k thats 4-6 refills..
so i reduced it even quicker... not sure why ezone does it every other oil change, i cant see the merit of it.. it takes a while to breakdown transmission fluid

ezone

It's not really a lot IMO.

By the time it hits every 3rd trans service it's had about 9 quarts run through it. That's like a complete flush spread out over 3 services.


This started when my mother drove an 02 Accord, they were well known for trans problems. It was the only preventive service I could do to the transmission, so I did it often. Yeah it may have been overkill, but it didn't develop any problems while she had the car either.

My own car gets an oil change about every 5k, so that's a trans D&F every 10k...so every 30k it's basically getting a complete fluid exchange, slowly. I'm pretty sure mine will never ever develop the TCC shudder that others complain about....

Two of the other close folks cars I care about might go 7-10k miles between oil changes, both are high mileage cars (160k, 240k, and counting)
Another is lower mileage and has the new CVT trans but I don't get to service that one much, it's not very close to me.


I also can do it because we accumulate scads of extra trans fluid in our shop, and it's free to me.


Another guy in our shop has an 02 Accord....he changes trans fluid every time the car is raised in the air....that's more often than it gets oil changes.
He just bought his wife an MDX.....it got 12 quarts of fluid run through the transmission before she got the car.

dsm482

holy **** i thought i was bad and annal about it