rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about the top five
things you should never do to your automatic transmission if you want it to
last, now automatic transmissions like this Honda cost a lot of money to fix if
they go bad, rebuilding them can cost three, four, even five thousand dollars, so you
want to take care of them and I'm going to show you five things that you never want
to do with them, now you never want to drive an automatic car through deep
water and here's why, you see that little black piece right there,
well this black piece right here that I'm tapping, that's a vent you have to
have vents on automatic transmissions as the fluid gets hot and expands and
contracts to release pressure, and if you go through water that will suck water
into the transmission, and let's just say water and automatic
transmissions do not go together, if you get water in your automatic transmission
sometimes you get lucky and flush it out and it'll work, but often it will destroy the
entire transmission and you'll need a new one, and the second thing never to do is,
never accidentally have your car go from drive into reverse while the cars moving
now this Honda is a better design, the shifter is on the dash, that's kind of hard
to do, but a lot of cars have them down on the bottom down here, so if yours is
like this, make sure you don't accidentally hit it and rip it into
reverse while you're driving down the road, because it will destroy the
transmission, I've had more than one of my customers teenage kids, when they're
learning how to drive and screwing around with their friends, do that hit it in
reverse and they just destroyed the transmission, and if they're older
cars they just ended up junking them, now the next thing not to do with an
automatic transmission car is, leaving it in drive if you're idling for a really
long period of time, because leaving it in drive if you're idling for a long time
that can lead to overheating of the inside of the transmission, if you're
going to be sitting there for really long time just shut the car off or at least put it
into park, because in Park, it's not directly connected, the torque
converter isn't sending a lot of power, so it won't get quite as hot in park as
it will and drive, now that's bad thing not to do with your automatic
transmission is, don't go around doing burnouts all the time
doing burnouts is one of the worst things you can do for an automatic
transmission, and of course burnouts aren't good for any car, I know you're going to say,
oh Scotty your always having pictures of burn outs, well those are standard
transmission cars, that's not that great for them, but you're just going to end
up burning out the clutch which is a lot cheaper than replacing the whole
transmission, now the last thing not to do has to do with your automatic
transmission fluid, if you have a later model car, don't listen to this nonsense
this says no need to replace ATF under normal driving conditions, it's a bunch
of nonsense, well I've dealt with that in a recent
video, it just basically says, oh the fluid is good for the lifetime of the
transmission, but then the lifetime of the transmission is less, and less, and
less, because you don't want dirty fluid in, you want to change it regularly and
yes modern cars use synthetic fluid that can handle heat better and break down
less, but eventually it does break down, I still say change your transmission
fluid every sixty to eighty thousand miles,
regardless of what these ridiculous directions say, realize if you take care
of your transmission it can take care of you, this Honda's been taken care of,
it's got one hundred ninety five thousand miles and even though Honda's
have relatively weak automatic transmissions, this one is still shifting
fine, so now you know what the top five things you shouldn't be doing to your
transmission are, to make it last as long as it possibly can, so if you never
want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!