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Interesting trip to the local Firestone today....


74Adam

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So, I thought this was odd and was wondering what the consensus here would be. My 2007 Corolla has 130K on it and I've changed the transmission fluid once at a Mobil 1 oil change place; at around 70K miles. So, I figured it was more or less time and stopped by the local firestone on my way home. The guy at the counter, who is the shop manager, tells me that firestone has a policy that they don't change transmission fluid on a car with more that 110000 miles unless they have done the past changes themselves so that it is documented. He didn't really give a reason, just said that was company policy. It's not like they would be motivated to turn away business so I'm just curious what their reasoning might be. Thoughts? 

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Hmm that's a new one as far as I have heard. Maybe they had a slue of customers who would bring in known problematic transmissions, ask for the fluid change, and then blame them for the failure saying they failed to do something.

 

I mean I once saw a firestone manager charge someone 900$ for an alternator replacement. I googled the how to video and the part, and it was less then 4 minutes long for the video and less then 150$ for the alternator. The things they do and the reasoning behind it I have a hard time understanding.

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If an automatic transmission is starting to fail and has never had a fluid change, changing the fluid can wreak havoc on it and cause it to be much worse (I'm guessing because a flush dislodges stuff which then clogs up passages.)  They likely get a lot of people who think that getting a fluid flush will fix their problem and then try to blame it on Firestone when it actually gets worse.  This happened with my first car, but the mechanic was a friend's dad and he warned me that it might happen and sure enough it did.

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I've been warned similarly with my VW automatic.  But it's a notoriously fragile unit that reputedly only lasts 150k miles, and I am 200 miles away from that mark...

 

I suspect flushing is likely to make it fail by dislodging any settled crap post the filter.  Isn't the fluid flow reversed in a flush process?

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Hmm, I thought that was a wives tale/common car myth? To not to change tranny fluid if you haven't for a while.

 

I mean everyone has anecdotes, but it always seemed to be the transmission was on it's way out and then they finally did the fluid change to push it over the edge.

 

I've changed fluid on all my trannies, never had a problem, if anything it usually tells me their healthy if they don't cough up any bits in the magnetic drain plug.

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If you stick the proper maintenance interval, you should definitely perform the fluid change/flush.  The problem is when it has been neglected, then the flush can do (and often does) more harm than good.  As for a manual, there is no good reason that I know of to not do it.  It sounds like they just made a blanket decision based on data from automatic transmissions.

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If you stick the proper maintenance interval, you should definitely perform the fluid change/flush.  The problem is when it has been neglected, then the flush can do (and often does) more harm than good.  As for a manual, there is no good reason that I know of to not do it.  It sounds like they just made a blanket decision based on data from automatic transmissions.

 

I agree.  My VW anecdote is an extreme example where VW actually says the initial fluid fill in the automatic is a lifetime fill, meaning no maintenance is "required".  Because it's a POS and doesn't last, so don't eff it up by changing the fluid.  I had it flushed at 80k with no issues, but I doubt I will do it again.  I'd rather it fail on me, then I can install a manual instead because I find I hate automatics more than ever now.

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