Anyone remotely involved with cars has heard this kind of story: Someone they know had a transmission dump and their transmission failed within weeks or even days.
The urban legend behind this is that the “sludge” is all that was holding the stream together and once it was removed with a shock, the stream had no chance of surviving.
The story goes like this:
Jim was having a problem with the transmission, let’s just say it was slow in the morning and slipping taking off from a stop every now and then when it was hot.
Now Jim has a brother-in-law named Bob who used to work on cars, doing his own tune-ups and oil changes, etc. When Jim mentioned the problem he was having to Bob, Bob’s immediate response was, “You’ve got to make that tranny red.”
Of course Jim doesn’t really know anything about a car let alone an automatic transmission blindly following his brother-in-law’s advice. After all, Bob surely knows all about cars even though he hasn’t worked on one for over twenty years.
Jim dutifully takes his car to the local lube place to have it rinsed and the engine oil changed while he’s there. Jim puts his transmission flush, pays, and is on his way.
At first, you may notice a slight improvement in performance, but your transmission still shows most of the original symptoms.
About two weeks later, Jim drives to work and stops to pay the toll. When he tries to drive away from the toll booth, the unthinkable happens: the car accelerates and goes nowhere, as if it were in neutral. Jim throws the gear into low and can limp his car to the side of the road and wait for a tow truck to take it to a transmission shop.
What happened?
Here is a list of reasons why the transmission wash myth exists:
- The myth is propagated by people who claim to be experts. I’ve even heard of transmission repair shops contributing to the myth in hopes of scaring potential customers into servicing their transmission instead of servicing it.
- There are thousands of “Internet experts” promoting misinformation. It’s really a case of “monkey see, monkey do” on steroids!
- There may have been a time in the early days of automatic transmissions when failure after a shock was more common, perhaps due to antiquated transmission fluid and friction material technology during the 1950s and 1960s, but this was before my time, so I can’t really argue with the legitimacy of the possibility. However, I can say with certainty that it is not a problem with 99.9% of vehicles in service today. If your owner’s manual is in the glove box and it’s not painted on a cave wall, you’re probably ready to go.
- “Mud” is everything that was holding the transmission together and when it is cleaned out, the transmission will immediately fail. Guess what? If you have mud in your transmission, it is already in bad shape and needs to be repaired.
- Occasionally a flush occurs, usually in a quick lube operation, and the transmission does not refill properly, causing it to fail soon after. Of course, the wrong fluid level is not recognized as the culprit, the transmission flush is! Many automatic transmissions have fairly complicated fluid level check and fill procedures that are best left to a transmission repair expert to perform.
- People have unrealistic expectations. A transmission cleanout is no more likely to fix a failing transmission than an engine oil change to fix a major internal engine problem. Both of these things are great to do on a regular basis, but they’re maintenance, not a fix for a problem.
- The reality is that most people don’t think about their streams until the day they have a problem. Jim’s broadcast was on borrowed time; he was going to fail anyway, but now that he has, he is going to perpetuate the myth. If he ever hears someone mention streaming download, he’ll proclaim, “I did it and my stream blew up in a month!”
I’ve been in the transmission repair industry since 1987 and can honestly say I can’t recall a single time I saw a healthy transmission get a flush or fluid change and subsequently have a problem. A transmission flush is the best maintenance one can do to extend the life of your automatic transmission, don’t miss out on the benefits due to the nonsense that surrounds changing your transmission fluid!