Does Changing Lifetime Fluid Kill Transmissions?

[Tiger]

200K miles on a tranny is end of life... not fluid failure.

[Cambridge]

mine died 3 monthes after the change, BUT ... that was cuz I was too late changing it. I changed the fluid and filter once I bought my car with 94K on the dash. drove it until 200K then replaced the fluid after 20K it died ... All in " Km " most of the guys does't recommend the change ... if u really wanna do it ... u need to run the fluid few times and flush it to make sure u drained all the fiber and Aluminum dust in the tranny.

ur car will run ok with the fluid it has at least until u get to 200K ... keep the fluid in ...

So, (for those of us back in the old English system), you changed the fluid at about 124,000 miles. After another 12,000 miles it died? Do you feel some junk got pulled into the valve body?

[grave77]

yeh ... lots of metal mixed with fiber. thats why I will agree on those who say that if u ride more on an old tranny u need to run the fluid few times to make sure that u flushed all the **** out of it.

[grave77]

I didnt say to run it all until 200K ... but I bought mine with 93K ..changed the fluid ... driven it untill 213K I think .. around 100K on the same fluid. but I think hot climate does matter too ...
after all it's hard to judge a tranny on a used car. might work fine and might fail even in few weeks after u buy the car.

[Cambridge]

...after a couple weeks now showing a 15 percent failure rate. ...things are looking up!

[Cambridge]

Well, after two weeks the highly scientific poll says expect a 15 percent failure rate. Not bad, considering.

I'll go get myself some Penzoil MVATF and have a go at it.

[Cambridge]

finished?

[632 Regal]

done deal I guess.

finished?

[swenpro]

Cambridge- I've really appreciated this poll on changing tranny fluid. As you may know, I also have a '94 540i. It just rolled over 100k last night! So I've driven the car now for ~1500 mi and I still get awful hard shifts, 2nd to 3rd, at moderate speeds when the engine is warm. From talking to Tiger, it sounds like I probably need to have a valve body rebuild done. Whether I do that now or later, I think I definitely need to at least change the fluid and filter (maybe o-rings too) now.

As the "designer/moderator" of this thread, I'm wondering what you've decided to do on your 540i tranny. Did you go ahead and put in the Penzoil MVATF as you said? Any follow-up you can provide would be helpful

[Beez540]

I never chimed in on this since I've never had the work done myself, but... my 540 has about 239k miles on it and the previous owner supposedly had the fluid changed twice at 100k intervals. I'm fairly certain they also had the tranny worked on a few times, but what was involved I cannot be sure. It looks like they got reamed on some services for trans program issues.

I doubt this helps, but I thought I might chime in as I have a smooth running,very high mileage transmission.