Video: Transmission Fluid 101

The automatic transmission in your car truck or SUV is one of the most complex components in the vehicle and has dozens of moving parts, typically under electronic control and it does a lot of work. Probably need some maintenance too so what do you do? Now even though a lot of newer automatic transmissions are sealed and don't really give the owner anything they can check. Most of the automatic still on the road are the old style which use something called automatic transmission fluid. It is a light kind of a combination oil hydraulic fluid, it lubricates the transmission and it also is used under pressure to activate clutches and such. And there's a fair amount of it flowing around what you can do as an owner in these older cars and even a newer one like this, this 2012 Subaru Forester is check the level and the condition of the fluid. Now there's a dipstick very much like an engine oil dipstick which in this case is in the front more often than not, the transmission dipstick is way in the back, little harder to reach here, it's yellow for easier locating, wisely Subaru labels at ATF for automatic transmission fluid just like the engine oil one says engine oil on it. And we recommend just as we do with oil that you wipe it clean, drop it back in. Now some cars, they specify that the car needs to be warmed up on a level surface and the engine needs to be idling, not always the case. So once again, you're gonna have to check for your particular car. We're leaving the engine off so you can hear me and so I don't hurt myself. And once again, this gives you much like an oil dipstick, an operating range and you see if the fluid is in the right range, if there is enough in it. Now even though most automatic transmission fluid historically has been red, you'll notice that this isn't. So you can't always go by that. In cases where it is red or even where it is colorless like this what you're looking for is not just the level but the condition. If it is older, it tends to get darker. And you can actually, in some cases, smell a burnt odor and that is always a bad sign. And it means that possibly something is wrong in the transmission but at minimum, you should have the transmission fluid replaced. Now what kind of maintenance your automatic transmission needs will depend on what type it is, what design it is. There are more versions of automatic transmissions now than there have ever been. You can have a conventional type that we've all driven. There can be dual clutch, continuously variable transmissions, even a hybrid will have the same interface here, the same shifter whether the shifter or the paddles are here, really doesn't tell you anything but you know what? You don't need to know what's going on behind the curtain. You just need to know what your manufacturer recommends and that as always along with the oil change intervals is in the owner's manual. Now, just to give you an idea of how different they can be. There's one Hyundai model I can think of that has two different engines and two different transmissions. They're both six speeds but they have very different needs in terms of the type of fluids they call for and the amount. And Whether you actually replaced the transmission fluid or not depends on a couple of things. One is what the manufacturer calls for and the other is the condition of the fluid and usually that is decided by your mechanic. Now, in the Subaru example here, the manual calls for a check every 30,000 miles. But it doesn't say that the fluid has to be replaced based on any mileage. This car also has a filter in the system that is supposed to last the life of the vehicle where other vehicles have a filter that needs to be replaced at some point along the line. Now there's debate about whether it can be bad for your car to replace the transmission fluid at any point, we find this a little bit hard to believe, typically what would happen is someone would start to have a problem in the behavior of the transmission and then the first thing they do is what, change to fresh fluid. Now not changing your fluid can definitely cause problems in a transmission but changing to fresh is probably not going to fix problems that are already there. (engine roaring)