i'm going to chime in on the topic of fluids and share my recent experience.

my 4.6 has been in the dealership multiple times for transmission problems. The last time it was squalling, making sounds like grinding metal and would barely inch around. They said it had grenaded and was completely gone. I didn't have, nor would i pay the $10k they wanted for the fix. In a hope of desperation I did a fluid change on it using the OEM fluids. It made it the 300ft down my driveway before trans safe kicked in.

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago, I had gotten my salvage transmission in as well as more OMG OEM expensive fluids and filter for this swap. Reset the transmission to get rid of the failsafe, praying i could get a couple feet out of it to make loading it on the trailer for transport to the repair shop easier and it drove right up on the trailer.. a little noisy but drove right up. I unloaded it and drove it down the street.. no failsafe.. still noisy.. drove it to the corner gas station and back (8 miles round trip).. no failsafe.. still noisy. Got online and found the cheapest compatible fluid i could find. Castrol makes a import ATF fluid you can get at walmart for $4.90/qt. that says it meets the OEM standards. So i dropped the pan, swapped the filter, refilled it AGAIN. I figured if the transmission was really dead, what would it matter to swap in this cheap alternative ATF fluid as a test.

Poof, no noise, no grinding, no squalling, no slipping on shifts. I've got about 600 miles on it since i swapped out that fluid and filter. I've already got 2 more filter kits ($15/each for pan gasket and filter as a kit) from RockAuto Auto Parts And i'm doing second fluid swap this weekend (3rd if you count the OEM fluid one) and when i get another 500 miles or so i'm going to do another one so that i have as much of that old fluid out as possible. So i'm just saying, to each their own, but i'm not buying into the "only use this fluid in this transmission" because the OEM fluid swap didn't help at all and even if it did its far to expensive to justify it when i can get a perfectly good alternative fluid for less than $5/quart.

$50 for fluids and filter, no matter how many miles i get out of it, its better than doing a transmission swap or listening to the dealerships dumb asses.

And yes, i am keeping my salvage tranny so that if it does grenade for real before I decide to get rid of it i'm covered.

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