Transmission Opinion Needed
 

Hello everyone. I need the advice from the experts out there on what I should do about my transmission fluid. I had a dealer change it at 50,000 and then I did it at 150,000. When I replaced it at 150,000 the fluid was black as black can get. I feel as though I may want to change it again at 175,000 because as we all know, we are only replacing about half of it at a time. Any suggestions?

BMW 2001, X5 4.4i

Did you drop the pan and change the filter too? If so, I'm guessing you should be OK at 100K intervals. If not, it's time for a new filter.

I didi drop the pan and replace the filter.

wow 150k on your transmission, original?

As someone pointed out to me, even when the dealer does a pan drop to change the filter they typically do not drian the torque converter, which retains a lot of fluid. Therefore, when people take their cars to the dealer for this particular service, (or do it themselves) a substantial amount of the old fluid stays in the car and in a few miles of driving it mixes with the new fluid and turns it black. If you are not going to drian the torque converter, you may want to drain and replace the fluid once more shortly after a pan drop to try to get out as much of the dirty fluid as possible.

I WOULD CHANGE THE FLUID AND FILTER AGAIN AND AGAIN UNTIL IT BECOMES CLEAN AND CLEAR. AND BY THE WAY, YOU CANNOT DRAIN THE TORQUE CONVERTER, IT DOES NOT HAVE A DRAIN PLUG.

I have 110k on mine and never touched the transmission fluid. BMW dealerships tell me not to do it

The cause of the good old bmw x5 transmission failure is not linked to the fluid.

This is up for debate.. so flamesuit on

Tbilisi, georgia

I need to know, when to change automatic transmission filter

Do you want the official word from BMW or the masses? What BMW recommends is to change the fluid (drain and refill) every 100k miles with no mention of the filter. So one can assume that it never needs changing. But most people will change the filter during the fluid change. The interval for the change is up for debate and have been discussed on more than many occasions. Do a "search" on the forum and make up your own mind.