Transmission Oil Change

[99FirebirdV6]

just wonddering.. how often do yall change your tans fluid. I changed mine in jan when it had 66k. Now its about 77k. Lately i been driving a little rough.. the auto trans is changing gear a lot.

I think i read somewhere that in some cases its best not to change trans fluid... is that true?

thanks.

[Marty85]

No its a very good thing to change your tranny fluid. it gets rid of all the harsh contaminants such as acids and the like that also make us change our engine oil so much. The only reason we dont change our tranny fluid as frequently is becuase the tranny isnt as suceptible to damage due to those foreign components as the engine is. Its usually good in my opinion to change tranny fluid about every 20,000 or 10,000 if heavy driving such as towing, mountanous areas or just plain old gettin on the pedal frequently as im sure we all do at some time or another. Its not real hard to do at all its just a pain and messy since there is no drain plug and you have to handle the fluid pan while its full after taking all the bolts out. If you do change your tranny fluid yourself, be prepared to get at least some on you, its kind of impossible not to. Also while you have your pan dropped it would be a good time to install any shift kits or modifications you might have purchased. Most shift kits are a matter of changing a couple of srings and the valve body seperator plate. The valve body is only held in with several 8mm bolts so its not hard at all to remove. Just make sure that if you do remove the valve body, to re-torque the bolts down to 8 ft-lbs.

[Den69RS96]

The tranny fluid GM uses is good for 100,000 miles, so change when you think you need it (100,000 seems to long to me). If you do a lot of stop and go driving, I would change it more frequently than the 100,000 miles, say every 25-30,000 miles. Most trannies fail because of heat. The heat bakes the oil and things begin to fail. If you do lots of stop and go, your generating a lot of heat in the tranny and I would change the fluid much sooner. The best thing you could do is add a tranny cooler. There pretty cheap and help you tranny live longer.

[99FirebirdV6]

I let my gf drive the car the other day and she heated up the tranny in 15 min. I could feel warm air coming from parking break area and the parking break handle was also warm (well i dont know if thats normal coz i never noticed it before)

But anyway...i am thinking to get a tranny cooler.. i was checking at autozone and they have couple for around $45. Does that sound right? I will be taking my car to Cottman guys for fluid change.. does anybody have any idea how much they might charge to put on the cooler? Also.. is there any specific size of the cooler for our car?

Thanks

[Fredless]

I change mine every 20-25k.

Been using the wal-mart Dexron 3 since I've owned the car. Got 126k on the tranny and counting, a crap load of track passes and about 10 dyno pulls. No cooler, and a 2800 stall converter.

I buy cheap and change often. Some will insist that you buy royal purple or expensive stuff, but I find its a waste of money.

Read the first one on tranny coolers:

https://www.zzperformance.com/articles1.php?id=23

Like I said, unless I've got one hell of a freak motor and transmission, You don't need a tranny cooler unless you're pulling a trailer.

[ezrollin]

after upping gears and putting a shift kit on, i was going to buy a tranny cooler.
thats a bad idea, thnx

[Dr Todd]

I change mine every 30,000 miles. 124,000 miles later, no problems..(Knock on wood)

[Den69RS96]

Take what you what out of that article, but thats one guys opinion as we all have our own. Regardless of that article, heat is the worse thing for a tranny and stop and go driving causes a lot of heat. A friend on mine went through two trannies on a c4 corvette. Car was pretty much stock. Put a cooler in and no more problems.

[ezrollin]

so should we get a tranny cooler or not?
zzp says not to cause the tranny cooler could fail and immediately ruin the tranny..
what the hail?

[Fredless]

Not on our cars unless you're spraying or putting some SERIOUS torque out.

Now if you had a C4 with a SBC that was putting out over 300rwtq, then uh yeah probably more practical to put a cooler in. Every car is also different, the 4L60-E can handle a lot of abuse in my experience.

Like I said man, unless you're pulling a trailer or got some sick *** setup, don't waste the money. Thats my opinion from experience, I'm shifting at 6500rpm (WOT) now and I still don't have a tranny cooler.

[rhouse21]

Originally posted by ezrollin:
so should we get a tranny cooler or not?
zzp says not to cause the tranny cooler could fail and immediately ruin the tranny..
what the hail?

Think about how a tranny cooler works. Airflow while you're moving passes through the cooling vanes and cools the tranny fluid, which is great for highway and trailering applications.

But how do we tend to heat up our trannies? If you afe like me, its's mostly with jack rabbit starts, 1/4 mile runs, or dyno pulls. We speed up really fast, but slow back down even faster. A tranny cooler will only get good airflow while your moving (giving good cooling), but once you've stopped it's really not helping the stock cooler inside your radiator that much.

I'm actually on my second tranny, but I think the first died becasue I bought into the 50,000+ miles between fluid changes story. I got about 80,000 miles out of it before it let go while attempting a high-speed pass on the highway. These days I do a fluid exchange about once a year (every 15-20,000 miles) and I've got ~122,000 miles out of this one so far.

[terminaldegree]

In normal driving, I would change it [drop the pan, clean it out, change the filter] every 50,000. If you're beating on it, more like every 30,000 miles.