Rev up your engines,
now there's two super expensive things on your car, there's the engine and there's the
automatic transmission, you don't want either of them to go out, you want them to last as
long as possible, so here's some transmission tips, the most obvious and bring thing is,
keep clean fluid in it, you got to change it every so often, now decades ago when I
was a young mechanic, we had to change automatic transmission fluid every 20-30,000 miles,
but synthetic automatic transmission fluid lasts a lot longer, but don't be fooled by
this nonsense that people say it's lifetime fluid you never need to change it, you still
need to change those too, so just do that every so often, it depends on each make and
model, you got to do a little research like nissans I'd still do those every 30,000 miles
cuz their problematic transmissions, but something like a toyota you could get away with changing
the fluid every 60-80,000 miles and you probably won't have any problems, but now I'm going
to talk about thing you might not have thought about, the next thing to make your transmission
last as long as possible is your tires believe it or not,
yes you want to have the correct tire pressure because if your tire pressure is low, your
tires are going to drag and have more friction, that makes the transmission work harder, the
harder it works the faster it's going to wear out, and if you have one of these fancy new
all wheel drive vehicles, realize that all your tires have to be almost exactly the same
size from wear, when your tires wear out or you get a blowout, on an all wheel drive vehicle
if you want the transmission to last you have to replace all 4 tires at the same time with
the same exact tires, most of the modern all wheel drive systems, the computer is continually
monitoring tire speed/spin, it lets the transmission adapt to what's happening, if one tire is
a different size from the other either front or back, it's going to be completely changing
how much drive it gives to each wheel to compensate for that, and while it's doing that compensation
the internals of many of these all wheel drive transmissions will start to wear out much
faster cuz they keep compensating instead of just going normally and not having to compensate
for the different size tire, which makes for a different speed and it confuses the computer,
and with the addition of all these modern anti collision avoidance system in cars, abs
brakes, lane assistance, even semi automatic braking on some of them, it's important that
your tire are all exactly the same, even on a two wheel drive vehicle, because it's monitoring
all 4 wheels and crazy things can happen if it thinks that one wheel in the back is rotating
at a different speed than one wheel at the front just because the tires are different
sizes, now another way to make them last as long as possible is this, when you do change
the fluid make sure you use the same fluid that came with the transmission, in theory
lots of different ones can be mixed together, but with additive packages and especially
with these modern cvt transmissions, you want to stick with the exact fluid that the vehicle
came with, all the modern cars come with high tech synthetic fluid, it's a very good fluid,
it can take heat better, it lasts longer, it doesn't break down as fast, it's a purer
type of fluid, so you want to stick to that, and not take a chance by putting a different
type in, nobody really knows what's in each of the different ones, you know that if it
came with one particular one you buy that same stuff it's going to have the same additives,
it's going to have the same exact viscosity and that's very important for a modern transmission,
and I know really that's one of the reasons that a lot of transmissions don't have dipsticks
or drain plugs anymore, because the manufacturers were worried that people are going to put
the wrong kind of fluid in it and ruin the transmission, which I've seen quite a few
times, you really can't now a days, you better off paying a mechanic who knows what he's
doing to change your fluid on any modern car, some of them have multi step processes that
can take an hour and a half, including road test, hooking up a scan tool, measuring temperature
and pressure, it gets really complicated, and you don't want to put a monkey wrench
in the whole thing by using the wrong type of fluid, so stick to OEM fluid on any modern
transmission, now another big tip to make your transmission
last as long as possible is keep your cooling system in good shape, make sure the cooling
fans are working, make sure there isn't any kind of blockage like paper bags or if you
live out in the country a zillion bugs that have covered up your radiator, and that's
because most cars have transmission coolers that help cool the automatic transmission
fluid, their generally built into the radiator of your car, so if your radiator is running
too hot that's going to make your transmission run too hot too, now big truckers have known
this for years, they have temperature gauges for their transmissions, but cars don't come
that way, unless you special order one or put on a temperature gauge yourself, your
not going to know what temperature your automatic transmission fluid is running at, so really
your not even going to get a warning, if your radiator starts to overheat sure you know
you really need to work on it, let's say that the part that cools your transmission is kind
of blocked, it might be that your transmission is running a little bit hotter, you don't
have a gauge for that so this is an indirect thing, make sure your cooling system is in
top shape, because that with make your transmission last longer, because the main enemy of automatic
transmissions is heat, you want to keep friction down as much as possible, just the very running
of itself creates friction, you don't want to have extra friction added because the cooling
system isn't helping to cool that friction down, that would just make things worse, if
you have dirty transmission fluid and a cooling system that wasn't working right, there's
a double edge sword that's going to cut through your transmission and make it wear out faster,
you want to make sure you got a good battery and alternator in your car, because modern
automatic transmission, their all computer controlled, if you don't have the correct
battery voltage going, if the alternator is wearing out and either puts voltage surges,
or doesn't put enough voltage out you can have transmission problems, you not might
notice it much, but as time goes on it the electronics are weak that can strain different
parts of the transmission and cause them to break down, it's a simple thing to have your
mechanic load test your battery, load test your alternator every once in a while, it's
part of the job I do for my customers all the time, sure in the old days when a battery
was going out and you try to start the car, it will go grunt and won't start and you know
the battery is getting low, but these modern cars their completely different with all these
electronics, I've had a lot of cars that will just crank like mad but they still won't start
and it's a weak battery because it doesn't have enough power to spin the engine and run
all the electronics at the same time, and since your transmission is now controlled
by all this electronic stuff, that makes it even more important to have a good battery
and alternator, cuz if their not putting enough electricity out, most of the sensors on those
things are either a 5 volt reference signal that have very little power, or 12 volt ones
that still don't use all that much power, and if the power has gone down, it won't shift
right, they might not even go down the road, the might just start slipping if the solenoids
don't let them shift you can have all kinds of problems, which leads me to another thing
that I have to talk about with electricity in your transmission, realize that your whole
transmission is grounded, it's negative electricity, and if the ground cable from the battery to
the frame, to the transmission isn't working right they can go haywire, all these transmissions
solenoids, they have to get a signal from the computer and the module yeah, but they
also have to have negative electricity, because cars work on direct current, in order for
anything to work it's got to have power and it's got to have ground, I've seen these things
where from either corrosion or somebody worked on the car and they knocked a ground strap
loose or even worse, took it off and didn't put it back on, that will make the transmission
go haywire if it doesn't have correct ground, now if you have cars like GM that are know
for having ground faults in them, it might not be a bad idea if you work on your car
to get a good wiring diagram of where all the ground wires on the car are, and especially
the transmission ground wires and check them every once in a while when your car gets older,
and the last tip is this, if you got a dipstick like this old car check it every once in a
while to make sure it's not loosing any fluid, now of course modern transmissions, a lot
of them don't have dipsticks anymore, so it's a good idea to crawl under there every once
in a while and look at the transmission, if it's fine it will be bone dry, but it's all
covered in oil and greasy you know something is wrong and have it looked at, and have the
fluid topped up if necessary, because if you run a transmission when it's getting really
low on fluid that will destroy them, I've had lots of customers sometimes maybe they
hit something and the bottom of the pan gets a leak on the transmission, and then they
drive it around that way for quite some time, and when they bring it to me I find the leak
and put a new pan on it, but then they just don't work right cuz the were running low
and sucked a lot of air in and that ruined the inside of the transmission, so now you
know how to save thousands in transmission repair with some pretty simple stuff, cuz
let's face it we're all in this together, we don't want to spend our hard earned money
fixing an automatic transmission that we can keep from breaking in the first place,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell!
