[Shotimes] Transmission flushing

[George Fourchy]

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:49:14 -0500, Juillerat, Aaron J wrote:

>Is it worth the cost and time to take an ATX in and have a flush done?
>Is that more affective than just dropping the pan and adding new oil and
>filter.

Oh, yes....you definitely want to have the flush done, at least once in its life. 
There is a lot of fluid in the torque converter that you need to replace
periodically.  Just doing the filter and the fluid in the pan is OK if the car is
new, but with these cars, as long as the tranny is working OK, you need to give it
the advantage of having all new oil with all new additives to help prevent premature
failure of seals and other soft parts.

If the tranny is on the way out, then just do what you need to do to keep it alive,
if you don't want to fix it....but the ATXs in FWD Fords nowadays (when SHOs were
new) were not the best designed, and so anything you can do to keep a good one good,
you should do.

I have a SLO, a '91 wagon I like a lot.  Its tranny went out with 21,000 miles on
the clock.  Needle bearings got all through it and locked it in 4th gear.  Ford
fixed it, and now with 145,000 miles, it is still like new, so I have AAMCO change
the oil completely every 30K miles or so.  It checks out good as new each time. 
It's a good feeling.

George