Originally Posted By: J. A. Rizzo
Originally Posted By: SuperDave456
You could do both for less than $40 and I can't see how either would hurt.
No, it won't hurt, other than the $40 you just spent on getting no tangible benefits and the time you spent accomplishing this. "...some change in shift quality," and "Zero issues" don't seem like $40 worth of benefits to me, especially when that "change" seems so sketchy and variable, but then I'm not made of time and money, and I don't sell these things or installation services for a living.
The real question is, has anyone ever lost a transmission and the mechanic said "if only you had used Lubegard and a Magnefine, this would never have happened?" And if Lubegard is $11.75 retail for such a miraculous-sounding treatment, why doesn't the manufacturer put it in there when they could surely get the product for a much lower bulk cost? If neodymium magnets and add-on filters are so great for transmissions, why don't we have people on here all the time saying that their ATF died due to insufficient filtration or excessive ferrous particulates in the fluid? And what about the risks of modifying the fluid characteristics, fluid plumbing fixtures, and possibly fluid pressure?
Not trying to be a jerk, I'm just saying that over-thought and over-wrought maintenance based on nothing but marketing hyperbole is a high cost, low return investment.
If you really want to learn something about this topic and be able to comment with some authority, go the the SAE website and look for white papers on automatic transmission contamination by two gents named Eleftherakis and Khalil. These two engineers started researching the effects of lube contamination back in the '80s and are still engaged in it. There's a lot more to this topic than your limited, anecdotal-based viewpoint is allowing.
If you go through those copyrighted papers, yes they will cost you I'm afraid, you'll see trans failures due to contamination has been a relatively big problem. In the old days, with hydraulic only units, it was a lesser problem. because the tolerances were higher. Electronic transmission are another matter because they use electromagnetic valves to control shifts and since magnets attract ferrous metals, the iron, which makes up approximately 50 percent of the contamination, is drawn to the area where you least want it. If those particles don't jam the valve outright, they effect it's operation causing hysteresis, a kind of fluttering of the valve. As I understand it, hysteresis leads to a little extra slippage. Slippage is wear and that shortens the life of the trans every time it happens. The valve will also be subject to greater wear due to these particles and may begin to leak. Lost pressure causes slippage as well, again shortening life.
A trans problem is most notable to the owner when the trans is new or rebuilt.
If the trans fails at 100K miles, the owner is generally more forgiving but the root cause at both ends of the spectrum is often due to contamination.
As to whether they would result in life extension or not, I refer you to several SAE papers, 2001-01-0867 "Automatic Transmission Hydraulic Cleanliness" (Nieuwland & Droste), 99PC-418 "Optimizing Automatic Transmission Filtration" (Eleftherakis & Khalil), 900561 "Development of a Lab Test Contaminant for Transmissions" (Eleftherakis & Khalil). Those papers, and others, based on testing that started in the '80s, sold me on the premise that there ain't no such thing as trans oil that's too clean.
If you want further evidence, do a web search for "remanufactured automatic transmissions." Look in your local yellow pages and see how many transmission specialists are in your town. Somebody is feeding these businesses. Take note that many tranny shops install an inline filter (whether they advertise it or not) to make sure the new trans doesn't die from contamination lodged in coolers or left in the tranny during the rebuild.
You can achieve the same thing as adding filtration by frequent oil changes. The first change is the most important, because an automatic generates 75 percent of the total amount of contaminants in it's lifetime during the first 5K miles of operation. The thing is, to bring contamination levels down to what most manufacturers think are reasonable (ISO 16/14 up to 18/14 or so), you have to dump out relatively fresh fluid. It's much easier and oil resource friendly to add an inline filter (the Magnefine is only one of several similar).
As to the Lubegard, I have no opinion. I don't know the product but in general, I think filtration is a more important aspect, so I'm likely more in your camp than on the other side. If your tranny is full of junk, an oil additive isn't going to help it. Once adequate filtration is done, then we can look at additives.
As to factory filtration. some newer automatics are down to 80u. Many are around 100u. Older ones are at 150-200u. The Magnefine, and similar, use a 35u filter and some have a very effective magnet that gets virtually all of that iron (50 percent of the total "junk"), so the net effectiveness is somewhat higher than the 35u filtration would indicate. Spin on filters can be of use as well, some of them having tighter filtration and more capacity than the inlines.
As to efficacy of cooler line filtration, here are some test data on two trucks:
The Magnefine reduced the ISO cleanliness code of the oil in the trans of my '05 F150HD from a already clean 15/14/12 (it was a fairly fresh change right after I bought it with 7K miles) to 13/12/9. That's an 81 percent reduction in the particle count in 2200 miles. I installed a Racor LFS spin-on filter kit in my old '86 Ford diesel, which has a 10 micron (absolute) filter and it dropped from a 16/15/13 (again fairly fresh oil) to a 15/14/11 in only 274 miles, a 66 percent reduction in the actual particle count.
"Return on investment" is difficult to define. If you trade a vehicle in every coupla years, well before it hits 100K or goes out of warranty, there will likely not be much payback for you (but pity the next guy). I still have a truck bought almost new in '87, a car from '00 and plan to keep a '05 truck for a long while. For me, it makes sense.