My mechanic friend says that you need to change your trans fluid to full synthetic and also the filter every 2 years or 40K, as maintanance, My car has 46K and has been serviced by acura at 43K. Do you think I need this service now? I was planning to wait until I hit 50K....thoughts?

 

Get it done when Acura recommends it (it's in your owners manual and you're nowhere near time yet). Many maintenance (and even driving) "rules" that you will hear are holdovers from long ago, when automotive and manufacturing technology were nowhere near as sophisticated as they are today. Your mechanic friend may well tell you that you should be changing your distributor cap every 60k miles too

 

thanks, i need an owners manual...

 

Helm's sells it for $37 (the link is for the 2004 which I'm assuming is what you drive based on mileage)

 

yup... thanks man!!

 

Without going into a lot of detail about automatic transmissions I’ll just say that it is always a good idea to do a fluid and filter change (if replaceable). It will prolong the life of your valvebody and clutches. The primary reason is the small particles of clutch martial that gets suspended in the fluid will eventually start to clog the filter reducing line pressure. Reduce line pressure results in slower engagement more slippage and more clutch ware resulting in even more particles.

As far as how long between changes depend on how hard the car is driven (traffic, hills, burn-outs) If you abuse it do it every 24k, if you’re a granny then every 50k.

Consider a tranny job on a FWD is around $3000, the fluid flush is $100-$200, what’s best?

As far as synthetic, I would insist on genuine Honda oil. Synthetics have not been proven to prolong ATXs.

jeff

 

http://www.thefesteringcyforce.com/tsx/tsx-atf.pdf , there really isn't a serviceable filter but theres an inline filter

 

That’s how it is on most new FWDs. It is important to flush the old fluid out to prevent the screen (filter) from clogging.

On my contour (notoriously bad ATX) some guys added an external spin on filter and cooler. If you didn’t flush the fluid every 24k you were dead in the water by 80k mi. My bypass valve and TC went at 89k (I didn’t take my own advice). After replacing the VB and TC, I flush every 24k ( I actually have a filter and cooler but have been to lazy to install them). Some of the guys with the filter/cooler and regular fluid changes are approaching 200k mi.

I was happy to see that my wife’s Subaru has an external spin on filter. She’s due for a flush next month (the car not the wife).

jeff