cajunkev said:
Wayne,
Thanks for your comments. Do you "flush" auto transmissions in the US....ours are now done this way.
We dont replace filters and oil now. "Flushing" is more expensive....about twice the price.....but said to be more effective.
I presume this motor will have electronic ignition and computerized analyses? Make it easy to diagnose.
Kevin
OMG.... you're going to be sorry for asking.....
Flushing the trans has proven to be a 2-edged sword. I got a job as Service Manager at a large Used Car Mega-Dealership in Los Angeles when I came back from sailing in 1998. The company had 25 of these mega used car dealerships and 500-new car dealerships across the country. Every vehicle that came into the used car dealerships received a thorough inspection. Any vehicle that had the hint of old trans fluid (from not being serviced recently) got a trans flush. I was very much against this policy if the vehicle was over 3-years old or trans fluid looked at all burnt. I insisted on pulling the pan (inspecting the residual), changing the filter, draining the fluid from the converter, then refilling.
We did this for 6-months and the powers to be over-ruled me and insisted on a flush only. They determined that the cleaning, inspecting and refilling was too costly and not warranted. For the next year, we performed a flush on every vehicle and tracked the vehicles that we recommended an inspection on. A whopping 35% of those vehicles came back to the shop with transmission problems (every car we sold had a 9 or 12-month warranty). 60% of those vehicles required a complete overhaul or rebuilt trans. It drove warranty costs so high that the policy was abandoned nation wide in our stores. Shortly after that, the entire used car chain was abandoned with a $25B loss. This loss was largely driven by bad policies on servicing and/or rejecting poorly maintained vehicles. IMO...
most of that was due to transmission failures.
So...... I never recommend a trans flush on any vehicle that has missed a regular trans service. Those flush machines are a rip-off to the consumer and a $ machine for the businesses that use them. They charge the customer more for the flush and the labor costs are far lower...... do the math.... someone is getting screwed.
The big issue is that if the trans has crap in the pan, that crap is going to be forced through the filter and into the tiny orifices of the valve body where they can clog the valve body and may cause catastrophic trans failure. To further aggravate the issue, if the filter is already clogged (which it will be if the fluid is brown), the filter may come apart and clog up the valve body even worse. A lot of the cars that we did came back on a tow truck after just a few miles. In that case, we had to eat the failure....... If it is a customer at a lube shop, the lube shop is going to tell the customer that the trans failed due to lack of service and either sell them a trans or send them to a place that will sell them one.
The fact is, any trans that has not been properly serviced has a
seriously shortened life-span. If the fluid is brown and smells burnt, catastrophic failure is just down the road. A proper service may slow the damage from getting worse and extend the trans life by 10K-20K miles if one is lucky (giving the owner time to dump that vehicle on someone else). My experience has been that flushing that same trans may cause it to fail within 100 miles or less.
Done with rant...... ;D
BTW........ the mentality in NZ is far different than the US........ The US is pretty much a "Throw-away society". Servicing a vehicle a way down on the average person's priority list. If the car fails, get another one........ In NZ, I found that people knew the value in maintaining their vehicles. It shows by the number of well maintained, older vehicles still going down the road. Very much a different mind-set.