path1 wrote:
I agree with Mocoondo on 99.999 things he says. He is one of the best resources on here. But if me I would change every fluid you have. You have no idea if someone took the rear diff for a swim or if some renter added whatever to trans.
Opinion -- Take it for whatever it's worth -- The odds of an average renter servicing a transmission with anything at all is as close to nil as you can get. They just don't go anywhere near it. After the first trans service, it becomes real iffy whether there is any added benefit servicing it again. Most trans guys that I know insist that if you have managed to take a trans over 100K miles, to just leave it alone beyond that and only take action if you notice changes to the trans fluid either color, clarity or odor. This has generally been my practice, even in my personal automobiles, and I have never lost a trans due to lack of maintenance. Also, trans problems won't fix themselves with a fluid change. If you see changes to fluid color or odor, it means your trans is wearing excessively and you will soon be in rebuild/replace territory. Some mechanics that I know flat out refuse to do a trans flush on a higher mile trans because they insist that the odds of losing a transmission after a flush go way up.
Take the advice for the value paid, but with these Ford transmissions, once they hit 100K, they get a full service and that is the last time they ever get opened until it gets replaced. And for the record, I have run these things for millions of miles and had a failure of exactly one Ford transmission and it had nothing to do with maintenance. It was a 6,000 mile transmission that suffered a catastrophic failure. No amount of maintenance could have prevented that.
