kingofire

Yes he did. One of the first thing out of his mouth was that the fluid has never been changed.

kingofire

This is the video by CCN.

mikemu30

There are always isolated examples one way or the other. My friend has a 4Runner with darn near 300K miles - original trans and fluid. Never touched.

E46CT

Yep many of us in the old days on the BMW forums had many BMWs in the 300-600k range.. all original transmission never touched. then you had your failures at 100k miles too. though if you plan to keep your car long, a better idea than not to replace your transmission fluid. even if its partial.

new fluid>old fluid.

if you disagree, next time you buy a new car, ask the tech in back if he can drain out all the new factory fluid and instead replace it with old trans fluid with 100k miles before you sign the dotted line!

mikemu30

Others might say NEW = Never Ever Worked

LeX2K

There are always isolated examples. Like this one.

grp52

Sure enough,

However, if you listen further into the video where The Car Care Nut goes into the symptoms of the old transmission's failure and the reasons for replacing rather than repairing it taken in context with his "THIS Is the Most Underrated Car Invention in 2023 | The Torque Converter" discussion, you don't have to be a super genius to arrive at the conclusion transmission fluid change status has absolutely nothing to do with the transmission failure and replacement decision.

The vibration and shifting shuddering are the symptoms of excessive heat warping of the torque converter. The replace versus repair decision was significantly, if not mostly, driven by the overall corrosion state of the transmission parts and fasteners. The overall corrosion state was such that it was fairly probable that there was going to be costly corrosion related problems that would have to be addressed during the repair work in addition to the work needed to fix the operational problems of the transmission.

NONE of those issues would be prevented by transmission fluid changing - no matter how frequent of fluid change interval one chooses. That transmission's design isn't adequate to handle the transmission fluid heat generated by the real world work loads the truck was experiencing. The externally exposed materials in the transmission's construction isn't sufficiently resistant to excessive corrosion damage from long term exposure to the Chicago area cold season heavy road salt use environment.

BBQapple

how many Toyotas/Lex have you personally seen with failed engines or transmissions and at what mileage?

LeX2K

Zero naturally. That's why I see so many nice cars in the salvage yards people scrapped a perfectly running vehicle. ATF never wears out, and wear metals and clutch material never end up contaminating the fluid causing total failure. Never happens.

artbuc

Yeah, I knew a man who smoked 3 packs per day. He lived to be 95 and died n a car accident. Just proves smoking is healthy and highly recommended.

artbuc

He stated that as a fact, not causation.

BBQapple

You don’t have to answer the question if you don’t want to

LeX2K

There is no point. Some people are 1000% convinced it is impossible for transmissions to fail and fluid lasts forever. Never mind that I've pulled many pans to find oil in horrible condition and heavy presence of wear metals. It was very obvious why the car was scrapped. Finding a good used transmission is very difficult because of this.

BillUK

For most regular cars over here, the recommended service interval is every 12 months or 10/12k miles, whichever comes sooner, and that's all the warranty requires. Naturally there are shorter intervals recommended for severe conditions, and specialist cars/trucks, but I don't know any regular ones that have shorter intervals. As far as I'm aware that's pretty much standard across all Europe, and we find it strange that the USA seems fixated on 5k changes. I imagine that it's partly due to oil being historically cheaper in the US, and the preponderance of quick change outlets in the US, who naturally have the sole goal of selling oil, something we've never really had over here, and so it's a message that's been driven home.

Transmission fluid is slighty different. Whilst most people probably never change it, and follow the liftetime recommendation, quite a few heve learned not to trust this, and so change at around 80-100k. Mostly though that's the kind of people who are interested enough in cars to be on a forum, which of course most drivers aren't.

As far as I recall that's always been the case in my 40+ years of driving.

ESh

You have no idea what you’re talking about.