Hey everybody, so I just did a fluid and filter change on my transmission by doing a pan drain and refill. Afterwards, when I drive the car it sounds like the transmission is making a clunking/thumping noise I believe it's doing it in circles moving with the transmission.
So, when the car is at low speeds its not very noticeable, it gets more noticeable around 25-30mph and very fast and violent at about 45-50mph, it seems like it's shaking or something. When I press the gas (I can't be lightly pressing it, but enough to where its accelerating a bit) or step on the brakes, the shaking stops, but when I'm driving and not stepping on the brakes or gas, it shakes/clunks. The sound is kind of like that of a bad throw out bearing. However my car is an automatic and when I asked my mechanic friend if automatics have throw out bearings he said no. He said to him (and he mentioned he didn't know a whole lot about CVTs) it sounded like the torque converter was starving for fluid. When I refilled it, I measured exactly what came out (it looked just under 5.4 qts) and filled that back up exactly. But after he said that, I made sure my total fill was about 5.5 qts but the problem is still there. According to the dealer, the car had its transmission fluid serviced once at 88,000 miles (the car now has about 156,000 miles). Here are some pictures of the old vs new fluid. My car is a 2011 Nissan Altima by the way (NS2 fluid)
And a video of the fluid
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krz5q6Fa6O4[/youtube]
To anyone who can't see the pics/video, basically, the new fluid is bright green and when i flip it over in a bottle it just goes to the other side. The old fluid is a dark brown with maybe the slightest ever hint of green, when I flip it over in a bottle I think of it more of a sludge as it leaves a tint of the fluid (in yellow) as it runs down the bottle.
I hope anyone with some experience of these transmissions would be able to help give me an idea of what's going on with the car. I hope it's not just a bad transmission, the transmission was working just fine before I changed the fluid.