West Escondido Automotive & Transmission

Well, this is the unofficial start of the s And if you have a road trip in the works, you may want to Now, if you drive an automatic, there's a service you probably neglected, and it could really cost you down the road. Of course, no pun intended. Brian Barrisack from West Escondido Auto joins us now. Brian, we're talking about the transmission fluid, right? Yes, ma'am. We're talking about actually servicing the transmission, correct? The fluid, filters, stuff And so how often do you need to get that checked out? Depending 12 to 20,000 miles in there, your service provider should be recommending it. Manufacturers have longer intervals, but what we found is that the fluid, especially in hot driving and people in San Diego do a lot of towing, going out to the desert, things And the only the fluid gets dirty, right? How does it happen? What happens is the fluid, it's a hydraulic system, and there's actually clutches with linings inside the automatic transmission, and they do wear some. So the fluid picks up and suspends all any contaminates that come into the transmission. The problem with that is the fluid circulated through the hydraulic circuits, w And if you get a valve that hangs up or a solenoid, because most trannies are partially electronically controlled these days, it can be catastrop Well, I was going to ask you, what's the risk if you do put off the service? The risk is having a transmission rebuilt or replaced. And that can get very expensive. Especially late model cars these days, they're extremely expensive, not somet OK, so we're looking over here, you've got a couple of the filters. Correct. We've got a couple of different kind of filters, different transmissions. As you can see, these are all newer style car filters. They're quite big. They actually have a Decron filter inside of them that catches the contaminates. There are some facilities that just The filter is a t So t And then a flush is not a bad idea if the fluid is starting to get really dirty. That's the only way to get all the fluid out of the transmission and clean the whole t Right, I was going to ask, do you always need to get the flush or? No, if you stay on top of it, 12 to 20,000 miles of service, a lot of times you may never need a flush because the fluid doesn't get dirty enough to have to change everyt It's just a service kind of t You get two t We'll keep it going without ever having to do a flush. So obviously the cheaper way to go, right? Correct, when the best way, it keeps it maintained. One t Everybody is manufacturing their own fluid. They are not interchangeable. In the old days we had Mercon and Dextron. These days we have everyt It's very important your service provider uses the right type of fluid for your ve Yeah, you were mentioning if two of these fluids actually mix, it creates a gel. It can start to gel on certain fluids, correct? And it can cause catastrop I can only imagine. Well, Brian, hey, thanks so much for joining us. No problem. Of course, if you have any questions for Brian, a s You can actually find the link to It's box6. com. You just have to click on Hot Topics.