Hey everyone,

Quick question, I have a 2004 Acura TL with about 156k miles on it and i had changed the transmission fluid about 1-2 years ago until my mechanic had told me not to flush it when i went to change it recently because it's an older model and with the amount of miles on it. He had told me that due to the year and miles it's best to just keep topping off your transmission fluid because if you flush it the fluid will be thin and give you a risk to break your transmission. Basically telling me i need to keep the current fluid and keep topping it off so it stays thick. Can someone correct me if i'm wrong or right? I'm about to do an oil change on my vehicle as i'm writing this and i'd want to do my transmission fluid as well so i know i'm good but i just want to make sure.

Thanks for your help!!

 

Very common and often propagated myth. If your transmission is going to die, it will die. Changing fluid won't make it "die faster". For these cars and their very fragile transmissions, I'd do fluid changes at ~15K miles and do pressure switches as well. That's basically every other oil change. It's good piece of mind and saves you from having your car's transmission fail on you.

 

In other words you're telling me i should change the fluid. I shall get it done.

Thank you!

 

Keep in mind there are three things all at play here in this discussion:

• Flush the transmission.
• Top off the fluid in the transmission.
• Drain and refill the transmission.

Flushing is bad; most manufacturers specifically recommend never flushing automatic transmissions; they simply aren't built to be flushed. Topping off the ATF is probably a bad idea as most transmissions don't use enough (or any) fluid, and the ATF will simply get more and more laden with worn out clutch material and become effectively exhausted.

The smart money regarding Honda transmissions is to perform a periodic (30,000 mile) drain/refill of the ATF. If it has been a while, or of the ATF looks dark, perform the drain/refill process three times over the course of a week or two.

In all cases, remember to only use Honda ATF; it is the only fluid guaranteed to have the correct coefficient of friction (COF) required by the designers of your transmission.

 

in short, yes