I have been having some shifting problems and I was recommended to flush the fluid.

Jiffy Lube offered me two options;1- 69$ service that flushes only half of the fluid.2- 139$ service flushes all (including fluid in Crankshaft).

But neither of them includes opening the pan and cleaning parts or replacing the filter.They told me that there is no need to do that for 98 models.

Should I try either one of the options? if so which service worth spending $$? Or should I try different service center?

Thanks

I forgot to mention;1998Q45with 140KI have no knowledge of any prior transmission service.

http://www.bgfindashop.com

Call and ask a shop if they will perform the service as specified on this board.

Parts from Joe's crew:

http://www.infinitpartsusa.com

B&M ATF cooler from

http://www.summitracing.com

At 140K with no history of trans service I don't think a flush is a good idea. What may happen is that all of the crud and varnish on your clutches and seals may get washed away and it will slip, stutter even more.

You should try to drain and fill the system yourself (or have a shop do it)and see if just putting in fresh fluid helps. If the fluid looks a little dark, but doesn't smell burnt, then you might get lucky. However, if the fluid is really dark or brown and smells bad, you might have to start saving for a lower mileage trans to swap in.

Any other members feel free to chime in. IIRC, a complete drain and fill to get all/a majority of the old fluid would take about 11 quarts.

Ted , Chicago

What I did was pull the transmission pan, cleaned the pan, replaced the filter, installed the pan with new bolts from the kit. Then added fluid and took it to a http://www.bgfindashop.com/locator/index.php.

Made sure I was able to watch while they did the flush. The machine shows the fluid color as the flush is taking place. If it does not get clean have them flush more while the machine is still connected.

tfvesquire wrote:1.) At 140K with no history of trans service I don't think a flush is a good idea. What may happen is that all of the crud and varnish on your clutches and seals may get washed away and it will slip, stutter even more.

2.) You should try to drain and fill the system yourself (or have a shop do it)and see if just putting in fresh fluid helps. If the fluid looks a little dark, but doesn't smell burnt, then you might get lucky.

1.) This is unwarranted speculation! To follow this to the logical conslusion, it is better to operate an automatic transmission with crud and expired ATF in it than new ATF. If this is so, why do not AT come with old fluid and varnish pre-installed?

2.) Color change from new is in direct correlation to ATF degradation. What sense does it make to leave 60% of a degraded fuid in the AT by doing a drain and refill? Not removing, inspecting and replacing the interior screen filter and O ring is a sin or omission.

People are entitled to their opinions and deciding their own course of action or inaction, but the fallacies of their reasoning must be exposed.

tfvesquire wrote:At 140K with no history of trans service I don't think a flush is a good idea. What may happen is that all of the crud and varnish on your clutches and seals may get washed away and it will slip, stutter even more.

Yeah, I think this may qualify as an urban myth. In years of reading this forum, not once has an Infiniti transmission suffered any problems from a flush.

My local Jiffy Lube franchise is great - one of the first 100 and VERY well run. I've trusted them with my cars for 15 years. But ... not all are great. If you trust your local Jiffy Lube, their flush is virtually identical to a BG flush.

I am so paranoid about my transmission and fluid degradation, varnishing, sloughed off clutch material etc that I just drained it completely and run it dry.

Just kiddin'. I went the Full Monty and sprang for 14 quarts of M1 and had a local bg shop do the work. The trans is an expensive Achilles heel and will probably send my car to doggie heaven when it goes, so to my mind the expense was well worth it. Did it help? I dunno but it probably had 120K on the factory jizz when I bought it so it was way overdue.


Modified by oldmako at 10:30 AM 1/7/2009

You will find several people who disagree with me but I would not sweat changing the filter or dropping the pan. I have dropped the pan and replaced the filter on a 97 Q45 with 215K miles and other than a small placebo effect gained little IMO. The "filter" is a small wire screen that only filters large visible chunks of contamination.

If you really want to drop the pan and you wanted to save some money you could clean the "filter" and blow out the debris. BTW, I also reused the pan gasket and pan bolts and have had no leaks in 30K miles but this is also not recommended.

I would change all the fluid and hope for the best.

Good luck!

Thank you all for your replies.

The only question is what chemical solvent is used AS THE FLUSH and how long it is allowed to circulated, how the shifts are done to make sure THE FLUSH SOLVENT reaches every nook and cranny, BEFORE THE FLUSH SOLVENT is removed by replacement ATF.

Because time is money many shop short cut the 20-30 minutes of FLUSH recirculation. Because time is money many shops fail to recommend another complete cycle when the process doesn't deliver clean as new ATF due to excess clutch material or internal out of standard cross leaks.

pirenuri wrote:I have been having some shifting problems and I was recommended to flush the fluid.

Jiffy Lube offered me two options;1- 69$ service that flushes only half of the fluid.2- 139$ service flushes all (including fluid in Crankshaft).

But neither of them includes opening the pan and cleaning parts or replacing the filter.They told me that there is no need to do that for 98 models.

Should I try either one of the options? if so which service worth spending $$? Or should I try different service center?

Thanks

Purchase 16 quarts of ATF from your local auto emporium and a 99 cent drain pan, get out your wrench and simply unscrew drainplug, let the 4qt drain, replug and refill....go for a 5 mile drive...........repeat entire process 3 more times, and you will have effectively replaced 85% of your old fluid- fast,easy,cheap,safe, and effective.

qship96 wrote:
Purchase 16 quarts of ATF from your local auto emporium and a 99 cent drain pan, get out your wrench and simply unscrew drainplug, let the 4qt drain, replug and refill....go for a 5 mile drive...........repeat entire process 3 more times, and you will have effectively replaced 85% of your old fluid- fast,easy,cheap,safe, and effective.

And 15% of the old contaminated fluid and 100% of the varnish and all of the detritus that won't flow out under gravity.

I see no savings here, only partially mitigated abuse.

maxnix wrote:And 15% of the old contaminated fluid and 100% of the varnish and all of the detritus that won't flow out under gravity.

I see no savings here, only partially mitigated abuse.

Brian, you might want to let the engineers at Nissan know that, as they ONLY recommend the drain/fill procedure{ no machine flushes} for the G50 and Q41, and you can also let my 222,000 mile perfectly operating original tranny know that also!

I did the following over the weekend.1. Drain ATF at pan and refill (~5 qts).2. Drain rest of ATF at radiator return line until color matches new fluid. (took 13 qts). At the same time another person is putting in new oil.

Note:The fluid coming out of radiator return line is extremely fast. So be sure to have new ATF ready to be poured.

Doing the above is another option if you don't want to flush. The old fluids are pretty dark compare to the new ones (Castrol ATF for import).

The care seems to drive normal. I can't feel any improvement though.

007

a drain and fill is all you need to do. maybe repeat it once more and add redlubegard and if desperate the lucas trans fix but if your trans shows no improvement then your trans is toast and will not get better with a 100% fluid flush.

Anyone try AutoRx for transmissions? Some on bobtheoilguy forum rate it highly.

qship96 wrote:
Brian, you might want to let the engineers at Nissan know that, as they ONLY recommend the drain/fill procedure{ no machine flushes} for the G50 and Q41, and you can also let my 222,000 mile perfectly operating original tranny know that also!

LMAO! My tranny is still operating great with 194k miles and no tranny cooler. I'm doing this to see how long it last againt other board members who say that this is greatly needed. If my tranny goes at 215k (which I doubt), I'll just get a remanned one. There is no way I will complain about a tranny after it last well over 200k. My next tranny service is scheduled at 205k but I won't go with M1 this time around.

Tech, you speak about the "things" that should happen with shifts, but never gave a time period. That info would be great for people to know when dealing with flush machines. If you are speaking about the 3-5 solvent flush in each gear...then I'm good because I did that at 175k.

Many members confuse the 90-93 tranny design with the improved reliability 94-96 or the further improved and less engine stressed Q41 97-01. The ~~10% lower peak engine torque of the 97-01 does wonders for the improved life of the design.

Along with dual heat exchangers and extra atf filter.

Really not possible to correlate 90-93 with later years.....................unless you duplicate the dual coolers and external filter and have a oem factory remanned replacement.

My 1994 replacement lasted 200k+ with an external cooler and frequent ATF replacements which might compare to ATF filtering. Tranny #3 with 120k+ is operating fine with zero signs of problems yet and I expect 200k as did the previous one even with the 20% higher torque than the Q41

Miles is such an effimeral concept without knowing the exact number of shifts per mile and the power output coupled thru each shift!

What I find MIND BAFFLING is that hardly anyone replaces the factory EXTERNAL fine particle paper filter......they keep talking about replacing the in-pan chunk stopping coarse screen.......

Could the 1994+ filters work on the 1990-1993 Q45's?

yes, but if you only have 1 in-radiator tranny cooler, or an aftermarket cooler it is cheaper to purchase an aftermarket tranny filter kit that uses an oil filter element, or easiest is to just purchase a MAGNEFINE tranny filter kit

http://www.magnefine.com

The problem with a small filter is it could get clogged and you would never know it until the reduced flow caused the rear planetary to fail..............the reason for the two oem heat exchangers in parallel is to prolong the chance of one clogging [common failurepoint in early designs, also on J30 where there is TSB].

A magnafine might be worse than no filter at all unless you use chemical flushes to dissolve the friction material periodically or change filter BEFORE it causes any restriction?????????? BIF oil/paper type can hold more crud so maybe two in series parallel

Study J30 TSB for RE4R01A.

The 94-96Q factory filter is BEFORE the dual in-radiator coolers, helping to keep them clean and unclogged.....I would plumb the magnefine filter the same way......Magnefine filter has a BYPASS valve that opens and prevents restricted atf flow if one would leave it on long enough to clog ......I assume the factory filter on the 94-96Q also does, considering hardly anyone here has ever changed theirs!

Q45tech wrote:Many members confuse the 90-93 tranny design with the improved reliability 94-96 or the further improved and less engine stressed Q41 97-01. The ~~10% lower peak engine torque of the 97-01 does wonders for the improved life of the design.

Along with dual heat exchangers and extra atf filter.

The FGY33 has neither of the latter, just the coke can in the bottom of the radiator heat exchanger design (more cost cutting).

The dual heat exchangers on the later G50 do help stabilize the ATF temperature, but on hills, at high speeds, or in hot summers in the south, the owner installed auxilary ATF cooler is beneficial in avoiding ATF temperature spikes into damamging heat ranges.

Seems like an external ATF microfine filter changed annually or more often would work fine.

Has anyone installed a stand alone "spin on" type of filter on the Q41?? There seems to be quite a bit of discussion on the G models but little on the Barbie-Qs.

I did the BG flush / M1 jizz / Lubri-guard routine and installed a cooler. I'd gladly pony up the minimal bucks and time necessary to add a filter. However, I don't want to just toss crap on my ride that might do more harm than good.

As you all know I bought mine at 120K and would like it to go to 220K (at least...there are many guys here who have gotten that longevity out of their cars without major surgery). Since it's used primarily for interstate driving my shift per mile quotient is very low. Or would that be ratio???

JOHNQ,

A drain and fill replaces maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the ATF. If I do it again, it simply is going to mix old ATF with new ones.

I bought my car (Y33) with 120K and now is 193K miles. Not sure when ATF got replaced last time so I've decided to replace all. I've used a bottle of lubegard red and don't see any improvement compare to when I got the car 4.5 years ago. I am confident it will make it to 200K and can get lucky (250K).

007

JOHNQ wrote:a drain and fill is all you need to do. maybe repeat it once more and add redlubegard and if desperate the lucas trans fix but if your trans shows no improvement then your trans is toast and will not get better with a 100% fluid flush.

if you dont have too major of a problem to begin with then there is little room for improvement. i was answering to the OP. but if you too want to make your shifting more smootherand did what you stated then try the lucas trans fix and let us know what you think

JOHNQ wrote:if you dont have too major of a problem to begin with then there is little room for improvement. i was answering to the OP. but if you too want to make your shifting more smootherand did what you stated then try the lucas trans fix and let us know what you think

I wouldn't put lucas in the tranny.

"A drain and fill replaces maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the ATF. If I do it again, it simply is going to mix old ATF with new ones."

If you disconnect the trans fluid return line from the radiator and do the drain and refill while the car is running by draining the old fluid into a bucket or drain pan and adding fluid until the return line fluid looks new again, then you should get 95%+ of the old fluid out.

As far as my suggestion against doing a flush on a trans with no work history being an urban myth, that is just what it was, a suggestion. I have wrenched on more cars than I can remember and even when I was dealing with my 4th Gen Maxima, it was not recommended to flush a trans with high miles when it had not been flushed before or with unknown history. In fact, there are plenty of reputable places that ask consumers if they know the last time the trans fluid was changed or whether a flush was ever performed just in case the customer's transmission starts having problems or dies shortly after performing a flush.

Now, if the Y33 trans is a better design and doesn't suffer from sludge and/or varnish like other transmissions, then I still suggest doing a flush at your own risk. I do agree that if there is a major problem with the shifting that a flush won't help anything. It would be cheaper in my opinion to simply replace the fluid yourself and save the $100+ trans flush fee.

Good luck.

Ted