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!