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For those who are alergic to maintenance...

...you'll love this one!

I finally got around to changing the fluid, gasket and filter on the Beater's transaxle today. It now has 175,000 miles on the clock, and I haven't taken a look at this since buying it.

I could NOT believe what I found, ladies and gentleman: it has NEVER BEEN SERVICED!!! EVER! Who the hell drives a car 175,000 frickin' miles and never bothers to service the transaxle???

I'll tell ya, I thought that servicing the wife's truck at 140k miles was bad. This thing was horrendous inside: there was a thick, grey/black sludge on the inside of the pan that was 1/8" deep; the filter medium was black, and all internal parts showing had a black coating on them. The fluid looked okay, leading me to believe that a previous owner took it to Skippy Lube and had them do one of their amazing $69.95 'fluid-flushes', which amounts to NOTHING from what I've seen here today.

It took me 2 solid hours just to clean the pan and magnet. When I buttoned it all back up with a new filter and fresh gasket, I poured 5 quarts of Mobil One Synthetic ATF in it, fired it up, purged air from the valve body, then went for a ride.

What a difference! It now shifts much quieter, and at a slightly lower RPM than before. I no longer get a hard 'clunk' when I go from R to D. I suspect the valve body was starved for fluid because of the clogged filter medium.

Folks, any one of you out there with an automatic-transmissioned Mustang would be doing yourself a BIG favor by servicing your transmission every 25k or so, and using Mobil One Synthetic ATF is also a very good idea. I use this stuff in my GT's T-45 with great results.

I still cannot believe anyone would let a car go 175,000 miles without bothering to service the transmission. Utterly ...amazing. I see people putting on junk like pink windshield wipers, fart mufflers, ugly-ass blue headlamp bulbs, and crap like that, when their money would be FAR better spent on simple, required drivetrain maintenance.

-JD

_________________________________ JD's Locally-Famous Mustang Page: http://207.13.104.8/users/jdadams

Reply to
JD Adams
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Reply to
John W

Who are you kidding? If I ever get my pan to stop leaking, I'm never going to take the damn thing off again! I guess I should abandon the idea of welding it back on... :-)

Reply to
Mustang_66

What model year Mustang had a "Transaxle " ?? *grin*

Reply to
Chief Wiggum

Hey it made 175 k on benign neglect and the PO kept his money in his pocket. You bought it and now the problems of deferred maintenance fall on you. You think the PO should spend his money so you have a nicer car?

Erich playing devils advocate.

Reply to
Kathy and Erich Coiner

ROFL...hell yeah; for what I paid for this POS, you'd think...

-JD

_________________________________ JD's Locally-Famous Mustang Page: http://207.13.104.8/users/jdadams

Reply to
JD Adams

Now it's probably doomed to blow up in the next 5000 miles. All the clearances in that trans are used to the thick grey sludge type of fluid, and the nice new stuff won't do the trick any more. But I sure hope I'm wrong. Good luck!

Chris

Reply to
Chris1

My transmission made it to about 50,000 miles with regular maintenance before the partly trained apes at Jiffy Lube cracked the casing by over-tightening the drain plug. By comparison your car made it over three times that distance without a problem. The moral here is, save your money, drive it till it breaks then just replace the tranny and keep going. More cost effective in the long run.

Reply to
Ironrod

Hmmm. My prescription for cost-effectiveness involves performing needed maintenance myself, and avoiding Skippy-Lube dumbasses altogether.

-JD

_________________________________ JD's Locally-Famous Mustang Page: http://207.13.104.8/users/jdadams

Reply to
JD Adams

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