<VV> ATF Change

[Joel McGregor]

Another point on maintenance intervals - people selling cars have several reasons not to tell you what the best maintenance intervals are.  Two I can think of are 1) being able to advertize lower maintenance costs 2) wanting to sell you a new car when yours wears out.  Of course one balancing factor is profit on servicing the car.  There's also perceived reliability as a reputation for the company.  The only real way to know is to have your oil analyzed.
Things I think I know:  My manual transmissions seem to work better when I change the oil.  I've seen a notoriously unreliable automatic take a lot of miles and abuse when the fluid was changed regularly.  I haven't had any issues with my transmissions since I've been changing at 3K.  My '82 Malibu TH250 was slipping in reverse when I bought the car several years back.  I changed the fluid and filter and started my 3K fluid changes and within about 3 fluid changes it quit slipping.  It has endured a lot of abuse since and is still working fine.  The 4.4L V8 doesn't have much power but it does full throttle upshifts as often as vehicles around me will allow.
Back on the subject of 700R4s.  I've rebuilt more than I can count.  A very common point of failure is the rear planet.  The needle bearings die, the gears misalign and then it breaks.  I rebuilt one in my '84 Caprice before I was doing the 3K oil changes and the new rear planet exploded at about 20K.
All that said it's hard to kill a PG behind a V8 let alone (in front of?) a Corvair.
Joel McGregor

________________________________
From: HallGrenn at aol.com [HallGrenn at aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 9:23 PM
To: Joel McGregor; virtualvairs at corvair.org
Subject: Re: <VV> Torque converter

Joel,

Why?  The automatic transmission fluid should be able to make it 30,000 to 50,000 miles in stop and go service before a change and that was with the original Dexron.

Bob