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'13 transmission fluid is toast. What should I do?
I bought my truck with high miles then put a ton on myself. After checking the trans fluid level last night, I have learned that the previous owner never had It serviced:
The truck has 210k miles, and has an occasional hard shift before it warms up.
I have been advised by two ford techs that changing the fluid at this point could result in failure of the transmission. Has anyone changed fluid that is this bad with decent results?
I would like to drain and refill, but I am being told that it is not a good idea.
Ummm, did the Techs give you a reason the tranny would fail with new fluid? Sounds a bit dubious, but I'm no Tech for sure. Hopefully someone with more knowledge than me will chime in as I would like to know the answer also. Good luck.
The techs are right. Don't change it now. You most likely have lots of transmission particles in the fluid from the clutch packs. Those particles are giving the transmission "grip" in the gears. The mostly likely thing that will happen if you flush and replace the fluid is that your transmission will start slipping within a few miles and be unserviceable. A flush will rid the system of any grip and lead to a failure. It's a small possibility that it would not do this.
If it were me, just drive it and save money for the upcoming bill.
I think I would drop the pan and change the filter and then refill with fresh fluid. Most of the sediment should have settled out to the bottom. This wouldn't be a shock to the system like a flush would be. I'd never do a flush anyways just because I think it can cause problems by forcing sediment and particles up where they shouldn't be.
The techs are right. Don't change it now. You most likely have lots of transmission particles in the fluid from the clutch packs. Those particles are giving the transmission "grip" in the gears. The mostly likely thing that will happen if you flush and replace the fluid is that your transmission will start slipping within a few miles and be unserviceable. A flush will rid the system of any grip and lead to a failure. It's a small possibility that it would not do this.
If it were me, just drive it and save money for the upcoming bill.
If it were mine, I would sure change it and the filter. I know that I would be thinking about that nasty crap in there all the time. Couldn't stand it.
On a normal transmission service interval I would tend to agree but with a 150,000 mile factory interval I wonder how true this still is. The op is 60,000 over so not too bad in reality for the interval. Not disagreeing just wondering.
Thanks for the input everyone. The part that I am struggling with is that the truck is only 4 years old... it's not like it's 15 years old with 210k miles.
This truck has lived on the freeway, driving up and down California daily. Nobody can believe it has more than 50k on it (the leather on the driver's seat even looks new). I would think that this is a special case, and the transmission has less abuse than a typical 200k mile vehicle. Now that I know what that fluid looks like, it's going to drive me insane.
I would drop the pan, clean it, change the filter and refill. Remember you will only get 7-8 liters out by dropping the pan. It's not a complete fluid change. See how it runs. If it's ok then I would think about doing it again. You won't be doing a complete fluid swap but you will have changed out a lot of the existing fluid, changed the filter, cleaned the magnet and cleaned the pan.
07-19-2017, 02:11 PM
'13 transmission fluid is toast. What should I do?
