Before I get flamed for posting this in this forum, I need a quick answer and the maintenance forum is a tad slower than this one. What’s the difference between a tranny flush and drain and refill? How do you do a flush and how necessary is it? Did a search and couldn’t come up with an explanation.

 

A flush involves the techs hooking the trans up to a machine which sucks the old fluid out and forces new fluid in. The difference as far as I can tell is that with a flush the trans is cleaned more than just draining out fluid. The flushing forces grit/dirt/crap out of the trans with the old fluid and the new fluid is pushed through, probably cleaning it some more. I've heard only good stuff about flushes. It's like the difference between flushing the radiator and just draining it.

 

I just got mine flushed (thanks Mark!) and I could feel the difference right away on the way home. I could hardly feel the shifts and I needed to watch the tach to know when they were happening. They used the machine he described above, and I could see the old fluid coming out of the trans, it was much darker than the new stuff going in. They used extra fluid to be sure to really flush out the metal screen and get any debris out of there. It costs a bit more, but well worth it.

 

Most Quick Lube shops have the flush machine. If you pull the drain plug on the tranny you only get about 1/3 of the total fluid out, and there is nothing pushing shavings or sediment out. With the flush they hook up to the radiator cooler lines and push new fluid in while you tranny pump pushes the old out. The flush should cost about $100.00 or so.

 

how often is it recommended that you get the tranny flushed?

 

do the flush your self, its easy and very cheap there are a few web site that tell you how. one is the amsoil site and i think gadget has it on his site as well

 

Yeah as long its not JiffyLube, i wouldn't let those morons change a airfilter.