Originally posted by fastcougar:
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.





I don't agree with the trans shop owner. My experience is that we have less trans failure from doing a full fluid exchange than we did with the old partual drain method from dropping the pan. Perhaps he sees more old cars than I do. I especially remember the big difference that a fluid exchange made in turbo Volvos. Volvo claimed that the trans never needed to have the fluid changed. If they were not serviced, they almost always failed at about 60,000 to 70,000 miles. When they were service every 30,000 miles by just dropping the pan, they lasted about 90,000 to 100,000 miles. When they were serviced by the hose in a bucket method every 30,000 miles they seldom failed.

It is my opinion that a trans that fails shortly after a trans flush, it was near the end of its life anyway. I don't see this often, but when I do, on teardown it is obvious that the trans was already in deep trouble.

Jim Johnson 98 SVT 03 Escape Limited