2010 Hyundai Elantra automatic - bad trans or bad fluid?

[bubbasmith91]

IMO you are whistling in the dark and wasting your time & $$. The drivability symptoms you describe point to a valve body issue that needs to be addressed. Time to take your medicine and get it properly diagnosed at the dealer.

I agree that it's a valve body issue. But it's 15 year old NJ car which makes it prime to rot out over the next 3-5yrs, so you can probably see why I'd like to tinker and see if I can't get it to resolve most of the way on it's own.

I figure at best the cleaning additives and new fluid help to clean some deposits and smooth out the shifting, maybe it smooths out quite a bit with full fresh fluid and some Lubegard - it's worth a try, for the $150 and some time put in, an extra $100 if my mechanic changes the filter, to see if I can get this to smooth out on it's own. At worst, it doesn't resolve much more than it has already, and I just changed the fluid and spent $250 for giggles.

If a fluid change doesn't resolve more than it has, the issue then becomes, it has been driven like this for 15k miles, and the assumption would be that there has been some damage to the clutches and/or bands. Probably not a high amount of damage, but enough overheating and slipping has been done in those 15k to cause some.

A new valve body from a Hyundai parts warehouse online is $1200+shipping, plus labor to replace it. Not sure how long it takes to replace a valve body on these.
I have seen several aftermarket Chinesium valve bodies around for anywhere from $250 to $800, but I feel like that's a bad idea.
So figure I'm looking at $1500+ to replace the valve body with a Hyundai one.
Getting the whole trans rebuilt or a reman put in is $2500-3000.

But it's a 15 year old northeastern car and imo even though it's a nice car, it's not really worth it to dump that kind of money into unless I simply don't have any other choice. I currently don't have the money to replace the valve body OR trans, I just want to mitigate the damage it's causing.

 

[Egg_Head]

Understand completely the the limited funds component of this. The valve body in the 6 cyl.'s are fairly easy to access from underneath w/o dropping the tranny. As you acquired this vehicle for $0, you may consider the aftermarket valve bodies and doing this yourself. You can get a masters degree from YouTube on the procedure.

 

[bubbasmith91]

Just out of curiosity, I SHOULD be doing a cooler line extraction from the return line going from the cooler to the trans, correct? I did it from the supply line coming off the trans before it entered the cooler, I don't think it really makes much difference but I am going to be doing it from the return line next time.

Going to be dropping another bottle of Trans Tune in it this week, get the filter changed next week, then run like 2 gallons thru it of fresh MaxLife and add Lubegard Red. See where we're at. If it markedly improves I might just live with it until the subframe rots out, or it stops being markedly improved lol.

Worst case I'll see how much my mechanic will charge to change the valve body and I'll get a cheap one. Just not sure how the manufacturing etc will be on it - I've legitimately seen mostly no-name generic VBs for the cheap, mostly remans as well, very diff from the market for Ford cars where theres 20 diff name aftermarket manus (ACDelco, Denso, etc etc etc) cloning the FMC OEM part or doing remans of them.

 

[SiRDOHC]

Just out of curiosity, I SHOULD be doing a cooler line extraction from the return line going from the cooler to the trans, correct? I did it from the supply line coming off the trans before it entered the cooler, I don't think it really makes much difference but I am going to be doing it from the return line next time.

Going to be dropping another bottle of Trans Tune in it this week, get the filter changed next week, then run like 2 gallons thru it of fresh MaxLife and add Lubegard Red. See where we're at. If it markedly improves I might just live with it until the subframe rots out, or it stops being markedly improved lol.

Worst case I'll see how much my mechanic will charge to change the valve body and I'll get a cheap one. Just not sure how the manufacturing etc will be on it - I've legitimately seen mostly no-name generic VBs for the cheap, mostly remans as well, very diff from the market for Ford cars where theres 20 diff name aftermarket manus (ACDelco, Denso, etc etc etc) cloning the FMC OEM part or doing remans of them.

I am just seeing this thread now, it relates to a car I have with the same transmission and same issue(s). Mine is a 2012 with less mileage and body is in quite good shape. Could be a good car for many years if I get this sorted, but I am leaning to giving up if Mechanic in a bottle doesn’t work.

I made a post in mechanical forum about a TransGo product that is supposed to fix these kinds of issues. Not really DIY friendly, doable but it is advanced level diy.

This being the second vehicle I have with this transmission model # , I have to say there must have been a design change or bad batches of AT units, because the other one I had in an 06 spectra had A: Little to No black stuff when wiping the dipstick and had nearly 3x the mileage on it without any of these major shifting/shudder issues. It did have a faulty internal harness (another issue altogether that would put it in limp mode) that took a trans shop a couple tries to fix and in their attempts and mine there were two or 3 late in life Atf drain and fills. The bulk ATF the transshop used made shifts a little delayed, and I found that Castrol Import restored it back normal.

Back to my 2012, I used Pennzoil LV and Max Life and a cheap ATF+4 because SPIII is insanely expensive in Canada and from my prior experience with the ‘06 the Fluid is somewhat important, but shouldn’t completely make or break it if the unit is healthy. It seems that it only gets worse with each drain/fill of ATF that I cycle through it.

 

[bubbasmith91]

I recently did part of what I was talking about in previous posts.

Money is very very tight right now and quite frankly I've never dealt with a trans pan with gasket maker, I don't want to mess up the mating surfaces of the pan and underside of the trans doing it on my back on the ground - and i cant afford to have my mechanic do it right now. So I skipped the filter change for now.

Instead, I went ahead and ordered 3 gallons of MaxLife Import off Amazon - they were on sale for $20.25 a gallon instead of the $34-38 that local Autozones and AAP charge for it. Combined with a $1.99 week trial of prime, I got the 3 gallons 2-dayed to my door along with a bottle of Lubegard Red (even that was $5 cheaper than AZ/AAP) for about $80ish after tax.

I went ahead and pulled the upper (return) line off the trans cooler and in 1.5ish qt waves, slowly flushed the trans fluid out until it was nice and red like the Maxlife. Ended up flushing about 10qts out, the base 7ish qts it holds plus a couple extra qts of fresh fluid just for good measure. I used about 2 gallons of the Import ML and added the ledtover 2qts of regular ML at the very end to thin it out a tiny bit (reg ML is less viscous than Import). Added the bottle of Lubegard Red and topped up to the HOT mark with it idling in N for 20 minutes or so.

It's been about 500 miles since I did that and the shifting has greatly improved and smoothed out. Some of the wonky issues are still there in terms of stop and go traffic and getting on it to pass people and stuff like that where I guess the valves or solenoids have to open and close super quickly, but for the most part it has smoothed out enough for me to live with it for now until I can afford to put a valve body in it.

 

[GSCJR]

When you can afford to, I would do a pan drop, along with a magnet/pan cleaning and a new filter, before condemning the valve body.

 

[bubbasmith91]

When you can afford to, I would do a pan drop, along with a magnet/pan cleaning and a new filter, before condemning the valve body.

Yes, I definitely am going to. I ordered the Beck Arnley filter/gasket pack with that Amazon haul as well, but unfortunately got let go from my job a few days after everything arrived. Plans shifted quite a bit when that happened, leading me to just pull the cooler line instead of having the filter done as well.

 

[GSCJR]

unfortunately got let go from my job a few days after everything arrived. Plans shifted quite a bit when that happened,

I'm sorry to hear that, best wishes.