Disappointed with Wix filters and customer service

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I bought a Wix transmission filter kit for my 2002 Nissan Frontier about a year ago. Yesterday, I was servicing the A/C belt and took a look at the transmission pan. I was shocked to see that the pan seal has significant cracks on the outside of the seal. Contacting Wix about this issue resulted in them telling me to just send it back to the original purchaser. Sure, I'll send it back so that I can be without a car for a week or 2 and pay for new transmission fluid. This will be the last time that I buy a Wix product again.
 
Yeah, don't take this the wrong way, but I'd put odds on it being an installation problem over it being a problem with the gasket. Not sure what you expected Wix to do, really.
 
At the very least compensate me for a new seal. It's ridiculous that a seal starts to crack in less than a year. I installed it correctly and torqued the bolts down with a torque wrench. Not sure how anyone could mess that up.
 
Originally Posted By: Dallas69
If it's not leaking you have no problem.


That's what I'd say, but I would keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't start leaking.
 
Originally Posted By: boom10ful
I bought a Wix transmission filter kit for my 2002 Nissan Frontier about a year ago. Yesterday, I was servicing the A/C belt and took a look at the transmission pan. I was shocked to see that the pan seal has significant cracks on the outside of the seal. Contacting Wix about this issue resulted in them telling me to just send it back to the original purchaser. Sure, I'll send it back so that I can be without a car for a week or 2 and pay for new transmission fluid. This will be the last time that I buy a Wix product again.


It's not worth the effort. Buy another brand and feel good that you got some additional old fluid out and new stuff in.
 
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Here are the photos, sorry for taking so long. As you can see, these aren't just small cracks, they seem to go into the oil pan. It hasn't leaked yet, however the original ( I'll assume original) seal had cracks but they weren't so severe and that was with 230,000 on it.





 
Probably fine and not cracking where it matters, not unusual for the exposed seal to crack like that. Long as it isn't leaking, I wouldn't worry about it at all.
 
If the crack goes all the way through, it may start leaking. I would just change it and move on, not worth worrying over something so minor that can be corrected in thirty minutes.
 
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Originally Posted By: drtyler
Probably fine and not cracking where it matters, not unusual for the exposed seal to crack like that. Long as it isn't leaking, I wouldn't worry about it at all.


This. I use the filter kits from NAPA and have seen similar external cracking, but it doesn't seem to cause any leaks.
 
This is why I spend the extra coin and get a OEM sourced transmission filter kit and gaskets. Seems most of the big name branded oil filter makes like Wix, Fram and a few others make very little to none of their transmission filter kits and source from whatever and usually off shore supplier to source their filter kits and loose parts.
 
Thanks for posting this. I bought a WIX filter for my 4L60E tranny last week. I was more than a little mad when I saw the words "Made in China" printed on the filter. It also came with a black gasket that felt like cheap (Chinese) rubber. Now I will find another gasket to use. Maybe Felpro.



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This would be fairly considered to be cosmetic and not functional damage.
As long as it's not leaking, there is not a failure.

I do realize that your fear is that the damage will morph from cosmetic to functional failure, but that's not warranted in the Wix written limited warranty.

In PFMEA and program developments, there are three things to consider:
- issues; know problems that are happening, are understood and can be fixed
- risks; potential problems that can be well defined, articulated, and described within a time-frame
- worries; emotional feelings or hunches that have no specific evidence of failure nor any timeline to failure


You're worried. That's OK. It's not wrong to have emotions. But it's also not a real failure; the gasket hasn't stopped doing it's job. Even if it did start to leak, it will be a slow drip that you'll discover. It's not like the gasket will have a blow-out and puke all tranny fluid out in 2 minutes, leaving you stranded. After all, this is the part of the system that only has gravity as it's pressure inducer.

Wix does not owe you anything; there is no failure here. If you are upset with that, then try another vendor. But you'd probably get the same response out of Purolator, Bosch, Fram, etc. In fact, why not write/contact some other companies and get their take on this problem? Ask them if they would warrant a product replacement based upon a visual cosmetic defect?


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What's all that orange glop? I can only speak for the cars I've owned but none of them required any extra gasket sealant. They all said either use a proper gasket, or use a gasket-maker compound, but not both. Could this be a case of some interaction between the gasket material and the orange stuff?
 
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