5 Signs Your Transmission Has a Serious Problem

Summary

Highlights

• Flushing automatic transmissions might sound good but can lead to blockages. 🌀
• Old and dirty fluid has more friction, which sometimes helps worn-out transmissions. 🧪
• Changing the filter and fluid routinely is a more balanced approach. 🔧
• Scotty shares an old mechanic's trick: sometimes reusing old fluid can be better for very old cars. 🤔
• Shops might recommend flushes because they're easy and profitable, not because you need them. 💸

Key Takeaways

• Flushing transmission fluid can cause more harm than good, potentially causing blockages and making transmission problems worse. ❌
• Changing the transmission fluid regularly is crucial for long-term vehicle health, even if the car manuals say it's 'lifetime fluid.' 🔄
• Mechanics often recommend transmission flushes for profit, so it's essential to know when it's actually necessary. 💰
• Transmission issues are often better addressed by proper maintenance techniques rather than aggressive flushing. 🚗
• Scotty shares ways to identify serious transmission issues that require immediate attention. 👨‍🔧

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:00: Introduction to Transmission Flushing In the chapter 'Introduction to Transmission Flushing', it's discussed whether flushing an automatic transmission is a good idea. The narrator, Scotty, addresses a common question about the necessity of a transmission flush. He suggests that flushing the transmission completely is not advisable because when you drain the pan of most automatic transmissions, only about three to four quarts of fluid are drained.
• 02:00 - 04:00: Explanation of Transmission System The chapter explains the transmission system, focusing on the complexity of flushing out old fluid. It contrasts this with the simpler coolant system involving a radiator, water pump, and engine jackets for heat dissipation.
• 04:00 - 07:00: Problems with Transmission Flushing The chapter titled 'Problems with Transmission Flushing' discusses the differences between radiator systems and automatic transmissions. While radiator systems are simple and do not face significant issues when flushed, automatic transmissions are much more complex. They contain electric solenoids and have intricate passageways that operate through pressure differentials. The presence of dirt in automatic transmissions can lead to complications, highlighting the importance of proper maintenance and the complexities involved in transmission flushing.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Advice on Transmission Fluid Maintenance This chapter discusses the potential risks associated with performing a power flush on a vehicle's transmission system. It explains that the high pressure used in power flushing can force debris into small passageways, which may cause blockages and lead to transmission problems such as slipping, gear engagement issues, or rough shifting. The recommendation is to avoid power flushing and instead use alternative methods for maintaining the transmission.
• 10:00 - 12:30: Modern Transmission Systems The chapter 'Modern Transmission Systems' begins with practical advice on maintaining transmission systems by regularly cleaning the pan and changing the filter. The filter's role is to catch debris, and regular maintenance involves cleaning out the pan and replacing the filter to ensure the system runs smoothly. Unlike earlier times when the narrator, an experienced mechanic from the 1960s, used to change the transmission fluid and filter every 30,000 miles due to less durable fluids and transmissions, modern systems are more advanced. However, the narrator still advocates for regular maintenance to ensure longevity and performance.
• 12:30 - 15:30: Case Study: Kia Transmission Issue The chapter discusses the misconceptions about 'lifetime' transmission fluid in modern vehicles. It emphasizes the false belief that transmission fluid does not need to be changed. The transcript highlights the importance of understanding that 'lifetime' fluid is only good for the transmission's warranty period, typically around 60,000 miles. It encourages vehicle owners to question this narrative to avoid transmission failure after 60,000 or 80,000 miles.

5 Signs Your Transmission Has a Serious Problem Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 rev up your engines people always asking me scotty somebody's trying to tell me i need to flush my automatic transmission have it all flushed out and new fluid put in is that a good idea no it's not a good idea now the reasoning behind flushing isn't a bad idea realize most automatic transmissions when you drain the pan take it off empty it out maybe three four quarts of fluid comes out and some
• 00:30 - 01:00 of these systems hold like 14 15 quarts so a bunch of the old fluid remains inside especially inside the torque converter because it's not like flushing your radiator system out which is much simpler now radiators have tiny holes that the coolant has to go through you want to keep it clean so that all those passageways don't get clogged up and the cooling system is very simple you got a radiator it flows through you have a water pump that pumps it through the system goes through the jackets of the engine inside to take the heat from the engine and then pump and dissipate it through
• 01:00 - 01:30 the radiator simple system you don't want it clogged up a mechanical or in some cases the new ones are electric pumps they still just pump the fluid so you flush it out you get all the crud out you're not going to have any problems but automatic transmissions completely different animal here automatic transmissions are very complex inside they have electric solenoids they have tiny little passageways that go by pressure differential you have dirt on your automatic transmission and you run a
• 01:30 - 02:00 power flush that's power pushing the fluid through the system those tiny little holes some of the crud could be pushed into the little holes jamming them up i have seen hundreds of people have the transmission flush somewhere else they bring it to me and say scotty my transmission is slipping now or it won't go into gear or shifting rough and it wasn't doing it before i had the transmission flushed and it's true that can easily happen the best thing to do is to drop the
• 02:00 - 02:30 transmission pan clean it all out and change the filter the filter is there to catch most of the crud so you drop the pan clean the dirt out in the bottom put a new filter in then the system is good to go if you do it regularly now when i was a young mechanic in the 1960s we would change the transmission fluid and filter every thirty thousand miles the fluid wasn't as good the transmissions weren't as good it had to be done more often now today the transmissions are better the fluid is better i would still change it every
• 02:30 - 03:00 sixty thousand miles or so in any vehicle and for heaven's sake don't listen to those people that say ah the transmission fluid in a modern car it's lifetime fluid you never need to change it then you ask an engineer what does a lifetime fluid mean and an honest one will respond well it means that the fluid is good for the lifetime of the transmission well ask them what the warranty is usually it's 60 000 miles or something hey i don't want a transmission that after 60 000 or 80 000 miles goes out maybe the fluid's still good
• 03:00 - 03:30 theoretically but if the transmission isn't shifting and you gotta spend four or five grand for a new one or have it rebuilt not a good idea mild celica it's got 230 000 miles and the transmission still shifts like a dream mind you i change the fluid every 30 000 miles not that big of a deal i don't even worry about the filter and this because these toyota designs a lot of them don't have an actual filter they got a little screen just like a mosquito screen on the windows of your house you just clean them you don't have to replace them because there's not that
• 03:30 - 04:00 much in them because realize transmission fluid is cheap transmission rebuilds and new transmissions are very expensive you don't want it to go this far you don't want a transmission that revs way too high before it starts shifting gears that's a no-no you don't want a transmission that herky jerkies when it's taken off or slips when you're trying to take off and you don't want to transmission that you put it in reverse and you step on a
• 04:00 - 04:30 gas and it won't move anywhere these are all signs that you have a transmission problem you want to avoid this at all costs let's say you let it get really dirty never changed it at all then if you try to flush it all that crud is thrown through the systems as i said theoretically it sounds like a good idea you'll flush all the crud out of the system and have brand new fluid in but it often doesn't work that way not only because stuff can get clogged
• 04:30 - 05:00 up but an old transmission that's worn they all run by friction the fluid has friction in it and the fluid friction helps the dynamics of making the car move down the road guess what really dirty fluid actually has more friction in it so if you change your transmission fluid by flushing it and you get all the dirty friction fluid out put in new slippery shiny brand new fluid guess what a lot of times the transmissions will start to slip now to counteract that on a really old transmission
• 05:00 - 05:30 let's say the transmission needed a shift solenoid they had to drop the pan real pro mechanics like myself they will save the old fluid and put it back in so it won't have that problem now that might sound like a stupid idea take out the old fluid replace broken parts then put that old fluid back in got a car that's got 150 200 000 miles a lot of times that is the smarter way to go with that kind of mileage you're often living on borrowed time and your borrowed time goes way down to nothing if you put in
• 05:30 - 06:00 fresh fluid from really old dirty fluid so why do some mechanics and shops tell you oh we're going to flush your transmission fluid well there's two main reasons for that and numero uno is it's a profit making thing it's like guys that say oh we have to power flush your injection system if your car is running perfectly fine you got no problems a lot of times that's just over selling something to people and flushing the transmission fluid it's an often oversold item and number two it's very easy for a
• 06:00 - 06:30 shop to do it that has the equipment if you're gonna change the filter and fluid you got to drop the pan a lot of the modern transmission pans don't even have gaskets they're glued on and let me tell you it is a job getting that old glue off without breaking anything you got to hit and pry and pull it's messy you gotta buy a filter then you gotta fill it all back up but with the pressure machine automatic transmissions have cooler lines on them that go to the radiator or to a special cooler all they gotta do is take those two lines off
• 06:30 - 07:00 hook it to their machine and flush it through it's a very easy thing for them to do with the equipment and as most guys charge more money to flush a transmission than it just drop the pan and change it they're making more money not a good idea to have an automatic transmission flush now yes you want to have clean fluid but if you change it often that's good enough yeah you're not changing at all you're changing some of it but you're changing it off that if you keep doing it and if it has a filter and you change that filter it's gonna get rid of any problems that
• 07:00 - 07:30 you're going to have in the first place and that's especially true in modern cars because the new cars most of them use a full synthetic fluid that fluid lasts longer if you're just changing a bit at a time maybe a third of what's in it when you just change the filter and fluid the old fluid mixed with the new fluid it doesn't have the degradation that the fluids did when i was a young mechanic in the 60s and they just flat wore up plus the transmissions are so much better made than they used
• 07:30 - 08:00 to be back in the day almost all the american automatic transmissions they had automatic clutches inside that's what they call them automatic transmissions and they would shed a lot of clutch material and that clutch material made of asbestos of course it's going to clog stuff up well they don't make them like that anymore so you don't have to worry about the gross contamination that the older ones would get if you didn't change them a lot you're going to have serious problems but today no the designs are better the fluids are
• 08:00 - 08:30 better so you should stay away from flushing them now as far as i'm concerned there's only one exception to this rule of not flushing let's say you got a vehicle and it won't even go down the road or it slips so bad that it's almost undrivable what the heck if you want to take a gamble somebody hooking up a machine and getting all the crud out of the system especially in american automatic transmission you might give it a try if you say that hey it's gonna cost you three four grand to have a rebuilt transmission put in and
• 08:30 - 09:00 it's an old car that's all worn out and it's slipping like mad or doesn't even move what the heck you might give it a wing just to see if it'll work and sometimes it will work i'll say 25 30 percent of the times that i've seen it happen like that they went back to at least drivability they could go down the road okay maybe they still slipped a little or they clunk a little but you could actually drive it when before the flush you couldn't but that's an extreme case of an extreme junker worn out vehicle
• 09:00 - 09:30 don't think that if you got a modern vehicle that's got 60 70 000 miles in support designed and the transmission is slipping or shifting weird that flushing is going to help that at all because realize that automatic transmissions are very complicated and very sensitive to fluids differential pressure to the friction that's inside them it's not like engine oil okay you're driving a car your engine's firing gasoline explosions there's all kinds of after effects of the burning and water vapor that get into the oil and
• 09:30 - 10:00 contaminate it so that stuff's got to be changed at least once a year or every five six thousand miles in most cases and yes modern automatic transmissions they're sealed units they don't have explosions and water and stuff going inside them they are sealed as long as you don't go underwater and air from the transmission bubbles out water takes its place when it's under water because there isn't the build up like there isn't an engine but over time you do get some build up just from friction things wearing pieces coming off inside so you do want
• 10:00 - 10:30 to change the fluid so maybe every 60 000 miles or something in a modern car but please listen to scotty don't get suckered into being sold a transmission flush job because then you may need a transmission overhaul job shortly after that you just weren't prepared for especially if you had a transmission that shifted perfectly fine in the first place and then it's starting to act up after the flush you got a transmission problem with this kia
• 10:30 - 11:00 check engine lights coming on well i got my scan tool in the dash it says p0741 torque converter clutch problem slipping or off so that's actually a very common problem with these keys as they age on a scan tool i looked at the recorded data for the trouble code and it showed that it happened at about 56 miles an hour and what's happening is the torque converter is either slipping or the lock up is not working right at higher speeds modern vehicles have automatic transmissions that get about
• 11:00 - 11:30 the same gas mileage as a standard all automatic transmissions have a little slippage in them so when you come to a stop and you step on the brakes the engine doesn't stall in a standard transmission if you did it the engine would stall you have to push down the clutch put it neutral automatic transmissions don't work that way they had some slippage but decades ago they started putting these torque converter lockups in the automatic transmission so when you're on the highway speed and this one was 56 miles an hour the solenoid locks it in place so there's no slippage at all so you get the same gas mileage as you would in a standard one
• 11:30 - 12:00 well this system's starting to break down needless to say even in this 12 year old kia it's all computer control there could be a ton of things wrong but often it's just the fluid i know this particular vehicle got over a hundred thousand miles of fluids never been changed so i'm assuming it's dirty first we're going to check and see if it's low we start it up with the engine in park then we check the fluid it's in here wipe it off put it back in then check the level
• 12:00 - 12:30 in this case it's full where it should be but as you can see it's also pretty dirty supposed to be red so we're going to take a gamble on this one change the fluid and add some of this lucas additive as you can see it says it's stop slipped i've used this stuff for years and then older transmissions like this i've often gotten lucky and it actually solved the problem like this that just started out this guy's the original owner of the vehicle and it's the first time this coat has ever tripped so i'll jack it up in here
• 12:30 - 13:00 and crawl under with a drain pan well forget this drain pan because as you can see up here the drain bolt right here is right above the frame so it's going to splatter all over so we need a bigger pan luckily i got a big one just for that so it can take a lot more fluid from a bigger area out of the way now these are often hard to get to so get a giant wrench that fits and a big hammer to hit it with then it wicks off they take it off probably gonna make a
• 13:00 - 13:30 big mess but that's life off it comes there it goes all over the place just like i said that's why you need the big pan brilliant design as you can see on the drain plug it's magnetic there's some little black filings on it not really bad but it shows there's wear inside then once it's done drying in you put the drain plug back in and it goes and then tighten it up then since we already checked it with the gauge and it was full we measure how much is in here and put the same amount right back in as i said before i'm going to use the
• 13:30 - 14:00 lucas chance fix 2 instead of one of the quartz i'm going to put this in drive it and see what happens so we'll pull out the stick [Applause] put it in the funnel and pour in all the fluids and of course remember to put the transmission fluid in too then get rid of the funnel put the dipstick back in and don't forget to recycle the transmission fluid then let the jack down and take it for a good half hour spin don't forget to close the hood
• 14:00 - 14:30 now only time's going to tell if this actually fixes it but from my experience with these kiosks since it's the first time it happened flu has never been changed i'd say i have at least a 50 chance that it'll stop slipping and tripping that coat now if the coat keeps coming back that means it's wearing it out inside mechanically and it's going to cost a small fortune probably more than the 12 year old vehicle is worth but this often fixes them for quite some time so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos
• 14:30 - 15:00 remember to ring that bell you