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So, how are you killing your automatic transmission? Everyone is killing automatic
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transmission just by driving it. Yeah, so it will die some time, but all of us want to prolong the
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lifespan of our transmission because rebuilding them can cost you $2000 - $3,000 and even more.
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So, the first thing you do to kill your automatic transmission is aggressive driving right after
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you started your car in the morning. The problem is that the oil, the fluid in this transmission,
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is not warmed up and it starts warming up really extensively, really fast. And then transmission
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starts overheating. When this happens, a lot of parts of your transmission will wear
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extensively and they will contaminate the fluid and this will lead to really unpleasant results.
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The second possible problem is slipping wheels. So, your automatic transmission is made for
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comfort, it's not made for sports or for fun, it's made for comfort, whatever transmission it
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is. And when you make your wheels slip, it just kills your transmission because the transmission
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parts slip and the friction plates will wear and they will contaminate the fluid again and you will
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get problems with this transmission much sooner than you expect. Also, how can you make them
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slip? Press the button "Traction control off" or "ESP off" or whatever you have in your car and you
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will make your wheels spin. When this happens, when you're driving very fast and aggressively
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or when you're driving in off-road conditions and your wheels are on a slippery surface, they will
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slip and the transmission will not love this at all. To avoid this, car manufacturers made a lot
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of different systems like traction control system, electronic stability program, electronic stability
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control, and they call it different ways in other cars but anyway, this is the same stability system
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that doesn't allow your car to go into any skids and doesn't allow your wheels to slip.
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The third way to kill your transmission is to keep it in Drive or Reverse when
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you're standing for a long time. For example, in a traffic jam,
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you see that you're standing for a minute or two or three and you still keep your transmission in
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Drive and you keep the foot on the brake pedal, so your car doesn't move but your transmission
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keeps working because it's an automatic transmission and it works every single minute,
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every single second when it's in D or R. And what happens in this case, the torque converter keeps
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rotating and your transmission keeps heating up and it will overheat sooner or later.
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So, the fourth option you may want to do to kill your automatic transmission is not change the
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fluid. A lot of manufacturers now do this thing, they say "the fluid is for the lifetime", they
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say lifetime fluid, so don't even try replacing it, don't spend your money on this. And it sounds
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cool, but it's not cool in reality because all transmissions, all automatic transmissions require
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change of the fluid. Why? Because the friction plates work, the torque converter works, and they
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all produce kind of waste material that is all in the filter of this transmission. So this waste
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material goes into the fluid and then the fluid is filtered by the filter and the filter is getting
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full, that's how it happens, and in just some time everything will go bad because the filter
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will not be able to filter the transmission fluid and the fluid will be absolutely dirty and your
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transmission will start jerking and making other things that you don't want it to make. And you
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go to a mechanic and the mechanic will say, 'Oh, replacement because you didn't change the fluid.'
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And the fifth thing you will never want to do if you don't want to kill your transmission is
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leaving it in Park but not applying the parking brake. What happens when you do this? When you
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apply Park mode in your transmission, there is a little system that is called parking
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pole. So this parking pole engages and it holds your transmission just with a little gear and
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a little metal part. It's not that mighty and it will not be able to hold all the weight of
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your car if you're parking on an incline. Even a small incline will be a problem. And when you want
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to drive this car, you will shift to Reverse or Drive and you will hear a certain clunk. So the
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transmission will clunk. It means that the parking pole was in a very bad situation, it was engaged,
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and it was holding the weight of your car. It can break in this position, it can break
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and your car will roll back, damage some other cars, and the parts of this parking pole will get
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directly into the transmission and you never know what happens after that. If you drive this car,
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there is a 90% chance that your transmission will be just dead in, I don't know, 100 meters.
