Taking Care Of Your Car's Transmission

In order to maintain you car in a good shape, to offer you the safety as well the performances it was designed for in the first place, taking care of your vehicle's transmission is a vital thing you should take care of. Modern cars have very complex drive trains, and the transmission being one of the most important elements of it, repairing it because of the in-proper use can be very costly. The most serious operations on a car's drive train can only be executed in specialized shops, but the casual maintenance operations you can make them yourself.

The biggest enemy of the vehicle's transmission is heat. There are many causes for the heating of the transmission's elements, and many are related to operating your car under difficult conditions. Racing with your vehicle, towing a load, or repeatedly putting it in drive and reverse for exiting heavy snow or mud can contribute to the overheating of its ensembles.

If you often are forced to operate your car under these circumstances, you can benefit greatly from adding additional cooling to your transmission. Such a cooler will be mounted on the radiator and it will cool the transmission fluid. Because many SUV owners use them to tow heavy vehicles, they came equipped from the factory with such auxiliary transmission coolers.

In the following paragraph you will find a series of tips about properly maintaining your car's transmission. The most important aspect is to have your transmission fluid checked on a regular basis. Also check for its color. It should be red. If it had turned brown or it has a burnt smell should be changed at once. Before buying transmission fluid, check with your car's owner's manual to se the exact type the manufacturer recommends. Never mix two different types of fluid of fluids coming from different manufacturers. The recommended period to replace it is every 2 years or every 24,000 miles, which ever condition occurs first. When you want to put your car in reverse, come to a complete stop first. Changing from drive to reverse while the vehicle is still moving will harm your transmission. In order to protect vital transmission elements, put the cark into park after you have pressed the brake pedal and pull the emergency brake. By doing this, less stress is applied to the drive train. Always change gears from park to drive only when your engine is at idle.

When towing a very heavy load or when you are climbing abrupt terrain, be sure to disengage the overdrive feature, if your car is equipped with such a option, as it will prevent the car from repeatedly changing gears from and to overdrive. Overdrive is the highest gear in the transmission and it used to allow that vehicle to run at highway cruising speeds with a reduced revs, in order to mainly save fuel and reduce noise. If the automatic gear in your car has a 4-speed transmission with overdrive, the overdrive refers to the 4th gear. The same is with cars with 5-gear automated transmission with overdrive. There is the possibility to have a smaller car, with a 4 or 5 way automated transmission, but without the overdrive function.

By Dennis J James