Quote:
Originally Posted by fe7565
There are multitudes of comments and videos on this contradiction... Comments below to help me (and others in the same situation) to navigate in order to make a decision.
Most dealers will advise against touching high mileage transmissions with no history of fluid changes. This seems to be related mostly to liability issues in case a dirty/worn transmission dies after a flush or fluid change. Hard to explain to the customer what may have happened. So they just refuse to do it, or charge unrealistic prices to deter you or to cover their ass.
Until about 100K miles in my car, I was on the fence about taking BMW's "lifetime" transmission fluid statement seriously vs the ZF transmission maker's 62K miles guide. Since then I have been reading up on it, and this is what I gathered one is facing with a 113K miles (183k km) car...which is already 83K km's over the ZF's service limit.
Do not flush, unless you replaced your transmission fluid every 30k miles or so, or you usually drive on mostly highways at moderate speeds. A dirty transmission would not benefit from a flush as the dislodged sludge and solids may clog the delicate oil passages/solenoids. So, you should know your car's history.
What about changing it when already over 100K miles? The best (insurance) would be to take a sample of the transmission oil, and send it in for analysis. If it comes back fairly healthy then changing should not be an issue at all. In a normal transmission oil change (vs flush) you are replacing at a 70/30 ratio (70 percent new/30 percent old remains).
I plan to [...]
|
Years ago ZF recommended every 8yr or 55k-75k miles for cars which were run on autobahn, used for towing or sporty driving. They revised that recommendation to vehicles with unknown history.
The YT video goes back to their old recommendation.
I always go every 50k miles on my ZF ATs.