Lubegard Red cleaning out transmission?

Joined
Feb 6, 2021
Messages
1,059
Location
Massachusetts
The first drain and fill was done at 127k, so quite some time, I did three more drain and fills, the last drain came out looking red and clear. On the last fill I added a bottle of Lubegard Red. After about 3500 miles, I noticed the shifting was getting a little sloppy, so I decided to do another drain and fill and this time added a bottle of Lubegard Black.

What surprised me is after only 3500 miles, the fluid came out dark brown and murky, almost exactly like the second drain looked like. The previous drain that came out looking clear had 15k on it. Could it be the LG red cleaned varnish or something else out or is something else going on?
 
Is it slipping or shifting poorly still? Another hypothesis is the fluid is getting burnt from slipping clutches and has nothing to do with the Lubegard.

What kind of car and fluid?
 
Is it slipping or shifting poorly still? Another hypothesis is the fluid is getting burnt from slipping clutches and has nothing to do with the Lubegard.

What kind of car and fluid?
I'm curious why you chose Lubegard Black the second time vs. Red.
It's actually acting even weirder after adding the LG black. It's a 2016 Hyundai Accent and fluid is Maxlife. I'm wondering if the Lubegard and Maxlife or the transmission aren't agreeing with each other. The transmission was fine before the Lubegard. The symptoms are mainly shuddering in lower gears at lower RPM.

The reason I chose black is because it thought it would help with the shudder, ironically.

At this point I'm wondering if I should just flush the Lubegard out entirely.
 
It's a 2016 Hyundai Accent and fluid is Maxlife.
Personally I found out that Maxlife didn't act perfect in my Toyota RAV4. It has lots of fans here, but I drained it and went to Aisin WS fluid (and added Lubegard Platinum). It's all good now.
IMO the Lubegard Platinum should be used with LV fluids, not the Red or the Black ones.
I would also try something else, like Castrol - Transmax ATF Full Synthetic Multi-Vehicle Automatic Transmission Fluid.
 
Last edited:
Personally I found out that Maxlife didn't act perfect in my Toyota RAV4. It has lots of fans here, but I drained it and went to Aisin WS fluid (and added Lubegard Platinum). It's all good now.
IMO the Lubegard Platinum should be used with LV fluids, not the Red or the Black ones.
I would also try something else, like Castrol - Transmax ATF Full Synthetic Multi-Vehicle Automatic Transmission Fluid.
Agree with sonic67 - based on the popularity here I used maxlife years ago in a gen1 Honda CR-V and the transmission developed issues that it didn’t totally recover from after reverting.

not sure what LG black was added for, but i would flush with a known good fluid and see if it all resolves. LG is not known to be a cleaner - it is a modifier additive which in my experience allows more clutch slip during engagement and transitions. The torque converter clutch could be doing overtime in partial lockup modes??
 
Agree with sonic67 - based on the popularity here I used maxlife years ago in a gen1 Honda CR-V and the transmission developed issues that it didn’t totally recover from after reverting.

not sure what LG black was added for, but i would flush with a known good fluid and see if it all resolves. LG is not known to be a cleaner - it is a modifier additive which in my experience allows more clutch slip during engagement and transitions. The torque converter clutch could be doing overtime in partial lockup modes??
This is exactly what I think was happening. In gears 3-4 it was the worst, those gears are cruising speeds of 20-30mph, where partial lockup takes place, in 5&6th gear it's full lockup, and I didn't experience any shudder there. It was almost like the torque converter was trying to lock but wasn't able to and therefore jerking and shuddering.

I drove the vehicle about 150 miles after the two drain and fills with Maxlife, buttery smooth like it was before. I guess it just likes Maxlife and nothing else. I've done about 20k on Maxlife and it's never given me problems, in fact the downshifting and TC clutch release smoothed out a lot compared to the OEM. Only reason I even tried the LG was because it's so highly praised for improving the performance and extending the life of transmissions.

It's strange because the red, black, and platinum LG are all specifically recommended in their conversion charts for SP-IV applications, but the tranny very clearly does NOT like it at all, even just the red caused it to mildly act up.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top