Originally Posted By: Gebo
I maintain my AT's by draining and refilling ever so often. I simply drain out 2-3 quarts, whatever comes out by gravity and then refill with the same amount. I'm using Amsoil transmission lubes and am wondering how often you think I should do this? Every 10K, 20K, 30K,?
Personally when a vehicle gets past 50K, I like to drain and fill every year or two (mileage driven on my vehicles is only between 15K miles and 30K miles every two years). Every third tranny service I like to drop the pan and clean it up if possible and change the filter at the same time. On Honda's they only have a drain plug.
Since you have a larger fleet of cars, I think on the cars that you drive daily and rack up a lot of miles, I would probably make sure you do a series of 2-3 drain and fills within a month to get most of the oil fluid out. Then figure out what makes most sense for you going forward. I wouldn't wait 50K to do a drain and fill.
You mentioned that you don't want to do a pan drop on the tranny, but once you do, you'll see how much gunk you have sitting in the pan.
Have a look at my photobucket for my 98 Sienna for proof.
http://s115.photobucket.com/user/charkin...rt=3&page=1
I got rid of the Sienna last year, with 285,xxx km (179k miles). The tranny shifted like brand new. I started using Mobil 1 ATF, but later switched that to Valvoline Max life. I also was running a magnefine tranny filter for the last 80,000 km.