RoadRunner,
Sorry for my mouthing off ... I seem to have done a lot of that lately. I am bitter at life and lashed out ... sorry! I am in a situation where I want to A) ensure that my transmission last a hell of a long time, and B) I can save as much money as possible in doing so.
My wife is unemployeed and pregnant, thus I got the Contour for the baby and the automatic for the wife. Her being unemployeed is really stressing us financially, so when I read about this method, I was very pleased at the prospect that it would A) help my transmission last a longer life and B) save me money in the process. My personal financial and home life situations steered me into my stance ... a biased opinion ... not good.
I just got back from lunch, where I talked at length with a local transmission shop owner about the CD4E and more importantly, about transmission flushes in general. He said that he rebuilds many transmissions a week due to such flushes and the shop themselves do nothing of the sort and are vietmaly agains them. He sited the same reasons that you have pointed out ... the process dislodges sludge/grime that are integral to seals that have been set for many many miles. He said "there is no reason that a properly operating transmission can't run it's fluid 100K miles without changing ..." key words there being properly operating
He was familiar with the CD4E and stated the following:
"It's a good little transmission and only has two main failure points ... high line pressure on heavy acceleration and forward rolling reverse commands ... other than that, it should last a long time".
I asked him about auxilary filters and coolers and he highly recommended both, but warned about frequent filter changes. I don't mind paying a few extra bucks every 12-15K miles to ensure that wear materials are being removed from the tranny. Splitting open the filter after servicing will give some indication as to the internal state of the tranny's wear parts.
