Since I have been working on my transmission this weekend, I'm curious as to what most people do when it comes to transmission fluid.
Our transmission have that green label specifying the ESSO LT71141 transmission fluid, that says it is not serviceable and recommend against changing it.
Well I'm one of the ones that has changed their transmission fluid, before I got to the 100,000miles (160,000km) mark. And if anyone ever priced out that 71141 fluid, we all know how expensive it tends to be $30/liter.
I decided to compare a bunch of trans fluids to try and cross reference something else and came to a bunch of interesting conclusions. That ESSO LT71141 is not even a pure or real synthetic, and when it is in the bottle it only has a 3 year shelf life. (LIFE TIME OIL BMW?) Anyway I found the REDLINE D4 came the closest to matching this oil on paper, but the one important note to make is that the 71141 fluid is not compatible with anything else, a simple pan service with new fluid will not suffice.
Long story short, I flushed my transmission out with regular WalMart brand mercon/dexron III, for those of you that think I'm crazy, fine, but we all know what happens not too long after you roll past 100k miles, so I figured it couldn't hurt to try. The only thing with mercon/dexron III is that it does not have the Long Life additives that D4 or the LT71141 stuff has, and must be changed more frequently.
I'm not endorsing the use of this fluid or this procedure in anyway, but i thought I'd put it our there for discussion and see what kind of interesting things people had to say about this, and if anyone else has also ventured down this path!?
I've put about 40,000km on this fluid and have done 2 pan services in this time to make sure there wasn't more wear or friction material in the pan or on the magnets. Everything was clean and normal, and the Fluid nice bright RED. I plan to change the trans. fluid every 30,000km or so.
01-13-2008, 12:37 AM
Linear Mode
