flush or drain

Have you ever replaced the fluid? If not, have you ever checked the fluid level? What color was it? It should be a medium-dark red.

Back when I was a poor maintainer of my '91 SE, I had a Jiffy Lube do a power flush on a car with 98K miles that probably had the original tranny fluid in it. I watched the machine, and what came out was pitch black. Within a week, I was having my tranny rebuilt.

Since that rebuild, I've gotten my fluid drained/refilled every 20K miles or so, and it's running perfectly (85K on new tranny). This next change, I'm having a place check the filter as well.

I don't know if this helps, but changing it more often than necessary is better than waiting too long.

Flush it. At that mileage it's probably still OK, but getting to be time. I flushed my '98 at 70K and again at 100K, and 130K. Still going strong at 157K.

'They' say should flush the coolant in the radiator every two years. Usually it gets done during the major service intervals but at 108k I decided to try it myself. Whatever they do with the flush machine isn't good enough. When I drained the fluid, I also disconnected the coolant reservoir bottle to clean it. It had a good layer of sludge at the bottom. Now knowing this, I plan on flushing the coolant myself between major services. It's quite easy too. Just inscrew the coolant plug, drain, fill with distilled water, drain, fill with new coolant mix. There's more to it than that but essentially that's it. When they flush your coolant, I think some of them just put recycled coolant back in. The book says you're supposed to drain the coolant by taking out all two or three plugs but I don't think even the service guys do that.

do you flush auto tran and coolant yourself ?

Reread the original post. He's talking about his transmission, not radiator.

Bottom line... to get rid of old, contaminated fluids that no longer to their job well and replace them with fresh fluids that will do their job well.

How long do you plan on keeping the car? If not very much longer (to

100k miles, say) and you aren't too anal about such things, don't bother. If you want to keep it for 10 years driving at the same rate you'd better change them on a schedule, and just about any schedule is better than the one you're following now if you haven't changed them yet!

Need to do both radiator and auto trans. Dealer will do it. They always check levels during regular oil changes and told me things are ok, but I should consider doing this before the snow flies. thanks