Scotty, You want us to ask questions, I got an answer, But not what I was looking for, I would like an answer from you! Is it a good Idea " to change the transmission filter OR not??" on a 2015 Toyota corolla with a CVT transmission?? "good or Bad" idea??
Thanks
You want to change the filter too.
There's a couple of reasons. First, the drain plug isn't in the lowest point of the transmission pan so you'll get more than an extra quart of old fluid out by dropping the pan.
Second, there's 3 magnets inside the pan and they can only hang on to so much metal before they get covered with a combination of metal particles and crud and can't hang onto all the metal particles anymore. So you'll have metal particles circulating in your transmission.
Third, it isn't that hard to drop the pan and replace the filter, clean the magnets, and put on a new pan gasket.
To answer your question, Yes. It is not only a good idea to change the filter and clean off the magnets, it would be silly not to do everything you can to protect your CVT transmission in that 7 year old Toyota.
You have a car that can last well over 300,000 miles. The ones that do have owners that take the extra steps to maintain them right.
Would you change your engine oil without changing the filter too?
Why wouldn't you change it? It gets dirty like any other filter. If you're changing the transmission fluid, change the filter. Only bad things can happen if you don't.
You don't leave your furnace filter in for years and complain because the power bill is high and the house isn't cooling or heating, do you? Same with machines. Clogged filter= performance problems.
Question about this....many dealers, including Honda, do drain-and-fills with tranny fluid but don't touch the filters/screens. Why? I had an independent Japanese shop do the tranny service on my Frontier and replace the filter and all but they, too, advised it wasn't necessary for every service on the transmission. I find this odd.
That's interesting. Are you being conservative and changing the fluid often? Staying up on maintenance can help the filter last longer. It will still need changing.
The dealer guys aren't paid well for what they do, and they make the brunt of the dealer's money. My 2017 Mustang had an intermittent check engine light last year. The light went off as I was driving to the dealer and they said they couldn't find anything wrong. My scanner found the code when I hooked it up, no light was on.
I'm an every 30k guy. I don't care what the manual says, the tranny gets serviced at 30k mile intervals. Roughly 25 cars in, the practice has never failed me. So yes, I would say I'm being a bit conservative (OCD...LOL). But take Honda, for example. Two Odysseys we owned over the years and never...not once...did they or would they service a filter (and I would ask). SOP was for a drain-and-fill and that was it. My Nissan dealer, who's service area is great and I'm pretty close with the service manager, do not change/clean the screens. Don't drop the pans at all. I pretty much had to talk the independent shop into doing it when they did and the only reasoning I can figure is there is a perception of liability if they do it and something goes wrong.
Nothing wrong with being OCD about car fluids, especially ATs and CVTs. That'll only keep it going forever, lol. Sometimes I wonder if vehicles with weak trannies, like the Odyssey are described that way because of the neglect all transmissions face. Most people just want to do as bare minimum as possible, and even skimp on those things.
I could see them being overly cautious if it's a screen and not a filter, the screen could tear if they aren't careful with it. Not changing a filter just seems silly, if it's between the pan and valve body, it's easy to get at. My Ranger's filter is like that, but it's also an old style 4-speed. I'm not sure if that particular feature has changed with these crazy 8+ speed transmissions.
Yeah, I don't know. The independent shop that did my Frontier's screen didn't have any issue getting to it. Just had to drop the pan and it was held up by 13 bolts or some such.
And you touch on a good point about the perception being linked to how the average consumer of a particular vehicle does or does not keep up with maintenance. Reviewing CarFax reports on used cars is pretty interesting. You might be surprised(or not) how many service histories show a complete lack of maintenance beyond oil changes and those can sometimes have 10k or 20k-mile gaps between services. It's kinda nuts, but I doubt most soccer moms pay attention to their transmission services the way someone with, say, a Civic Si likely does. The whole thing about not servicing transmissions over 100k miles for fear of failure falls in this vein, too. The reality is there's nothing wrong with doing that if you do it regularly. The issue and perception of harm comes in because folks wait til they hit 120k and feel a "shimmy" or a "shake". They get the fluid changed, internal parts come to rest on one another, they refill it and go back to running and it fails. It was going to fail anyway because they didn't maintain it earlier. Had nothing to do with the 100k-mile mark, but I think so many mechanics get blamed when they inevitably fail due to long-term neglect that they often just refuse to service one over 100k now.
If you have a replaceable filter that does not require tearing the transmission apart for access it's always going to be a good idea to replace it when changing fluid. (Some transmissions just have a screen that doesn't need to be replaced, just cleaned if needed.)
Good for you. Do these stealerships also not replace the oil filter when doing an oil change?