Originally Posted By: Aichiguy
You might be right DBMaster but the last tranny I had rebuilt was $1810. It certainly can't hurt to remove worn contaminated fluid from a tranny and replace it with fresh fluid. My experience is when it's time to sell a car it's very beneficial to show them clean tranny, power steering, and brake fluid. I would like to hear from someone who repairs transmissions for a living. He or she has more expertise.
The one thing I find wrong with this narrative is that there seems to be an assumption that changing the fluid, or changing it more often, would have changed the outcome. There doesn't seem to be any supporting evidence for that conclusion. I do agree that if a used car buyer cares about this stuff they would prefer to see clean fluids. I check inside the valve cover with a flashlight. It's easy to put fresh oil into a dirty engine. Overall, I might tend to look at it the way I consider "new tires" on a used car. I don't want new tires. I want good tires with enough wear on them to indicate whether or not the vehicle has suspension or alignment issues. I really do think that vehicles with lifetime fluid are a valid thing. If I were to want the warm fuzzies I might consider a drain and fill somewhere between 50K and 100K miles, but I did that on my Skyactiv Mazda3 at 60K miles with Mazda's proprietary FZ fluid and got fluid out that looked and smelled almost exactly like the brand new stuff I put in - not that appearance means much since it comes from dye.
