My roommate has a '99 Taco 4cylinder auto with 130K miles on it. He bought the truck with 1K miles on it and has never changed the tranny fluid. He knows he's an idiot. Anyways, he says that the fluid is brown but not burnt or black. Is it possible for him to get a tranny flush and filter replaced or screen cleaned and have his tranny not go out? Could he do it twice in a short period of time to get all the trash out of it? Or how about just doing a fluid change regularly until it lightens up?

Will he just be better off leaving it alone? I think there might be a chance he can do his fluid since it isn't black but I'm not too sure.

What do you guys think?

 

he may be OK doing a change, but there is a possibility that varnish has accumulated around case seals and piston seals, which if its cleaned off may result in external leaks and internal leaks which will affect how the trans operates, its kind of a hit or miss deal

 

i've heard that a professional power flush would do the trick for him. if the trans isn't acting up then there may not be enough damage yet to affect the performance, albeit, the life of the trans may have been shortened. i'd change the fluid yesterday though.

 

I certainly wouldn't recommend a flush at this point.

A 'drain and fill' with the next few oil changes would probably be much better.

-John

 

Ok thanks. That's what I was looking for from someone with experience in the field.

I'm still open to anyone else's opinions.

 

I flushed my 93 for the first time last year. 150k

The dealer probably did the normal drain and refill at the major intervals though.

So far so good.

 

Yeah, I've heard rumors that if its never been done, leave well enough alone. I had a Mercury Topaz (I know, a crap car to begin with) that was having slight slippage in the tranny. Like a doofus, I changed it out, and it immediately got a whole lot worse.

 

I say do a flush. That's the only way you get alot of the varnish out of there. A flush runs off of the pressure from the tranny pump. The tranny pumps the fluid out and the new fluid goes in.

 

I say do a 5 speed....

 

Transdude...Why not flush? I dont understand. Is the process fairly agressive with the components or something?

I do, however, remember that when I had the trans flushed in my 87 pathy at 248k miles, it got BAD, and overheated ALL of the time.

 

I think the lore is that theflush gets rid of some of the "goo" that is actually helping hold things together. Especially if you're already experiencing problems, the damage is done, and goinga flush probably isn't going to magically make the previous damage go away.

 

Gadget's tranny page

http://www.gadgetonline.com/TransFlush.htm

 

It is likely that you will cause problems if you flush a trans that has over 100000 miles without ever having been serviced.

-John

 

John's the man when it comes to trannys. I would heed his advise.

Dave