Transmission fluid replacement
My son has a 2000 Escort zx2.
He had about 100,000 miles on his automatic transmission without a fluid
change, When I drove the car I immediately noticed how slow the
car changed gears so I purchased a new filter and gasket. Those
automatic units need to get a change every 30,000 or so.
I looked up the replacement type and
volume. All sources of information I found were consistent: four
quarts of Mercon 5. These sources included salesmen from 2
different parts stores, the web and two different maintenance manuals.
I
encountered some difficulty removing the pan on those Escorts because it
is impossible to get at all the pan bolts, especially with a car from Michigan
where a lot of salt is used on the roads during winter and everything is
rusty. A brace supports the front motor mount and it blocks access
to several of the pan bolts. So I found it completely necessary to
drop that brace while supporting the front motor mount with a jack.
In addition the brace is also blocked by another brace that runs laterally
and supports the lower wheel control arms. With that done I had clear
access to all the pan bolts and was able to drop the pan.
When I drained the pan I was
surprised at how little of the old oil was there. I replaced the
filter and gasket and refilled the transmission with new oil. To
my astonishment I found out that the transmission needed only two quarts
or so of Mercon 5, not four quarts as all the books and people had told me.
So I had to remove the engine braces and pan bolts, and drain out around
two quarts of excess oil. Needless to say I was quite upset.
The moral of this story is to measure what you take out so you can put
an equal quantity of new stuff back in. Maybe another moral is
that the technical writers don't always know how to write technical
manuals.
I tried to find out why everybody was
wrong. Some people said that the books are wrong because they
refer to a complete overhaul in which case you do need four quarts of
fluid plus the additional 5 quarts in the torque converter. I was unable to find anybody who could give me a good
reason why all the books and service people are unable to tell me how
much transmission oil is needed to change the transmission fluid.