Bryan Ashby

This is for all cars with CVT transmissions. You'll probably notice that if you bought your car new it has great power and great mpg but as you reach around 75-100 thousand km on it you'll notice that your power and fuel economy go down even if you change the fluid every 48000km. Part of the reason for this is because when you take the car to have the fluid changed at the dealership or wherever, they only change the fluid and not the filters because there is a drain plug on the fluid pan unlike all transmissions before that you would take the whole pan off. The dealerships say it doesn't need to be done but the last time I checked... if a filter doesn't ever get clogged with what it's filtering, then it's not a filter and not needed. So since they exist in these transmissions they must be doing something and I have found that they are. If the pump can't draw the fluid through the filters because they're clogged then it takes longer to build up the pressure needed to change the ratio which increases acceleration time which burns way more gas.
Also, the computer in the car tracks when the transmission fluid is changed by km travelled, usually the dealership needs to reset this when the fluid change is done. If it is not done the computer switches the tranny into a kind of mode that makes it take way longer to get up to speed by slowing the acceleration time to protect the transmission. So when you get your Transmission fluid changed, you must change both filters and make sure the dealership resets the counter to zero in the computer that tracks the distance travelled since the transmission fluid was changed last. The two Filters in the transmission are located in the pan and behind the fluid warmer. My highway L/100km went from between 6.8-7.4 at new, up to between 8.4-9.8; and when I changed the filters and had the counter reset it went back to 6.8-7.4L/100km and a huge noticeable increase in power.

rsjust2nice

Thanks for this, good to know as she starts getting up there in mileage