First, the dipstick. When I check it cold it's in between the notches. When I warm up the engine for about 10-15 minutes and check it, its right in the hashmarks. My problem is, when I'm warming up the engine, if I try to check the fluid with the engine still on, there's barely any fluid and its only at the tip of the dipstick, but if I warm up the fluid with the engine on for a while and then shut the car off and check it, it's right in the hashmarks. So, is the fluid level correct, is that how I'm supposed to check it? Or do I need to go by the level of when the fluid is warmed up and the engine is running? I assume I don't because it looks right when I check it cold so it wouldn't make sense for there to be even less when its heated up/running but I don't know. Any response would be appreciated
Secondly, today when I drained a little over 100mL to get the fluid to where I think it's right, I saved it and put it in a bottle for comparison. It doesn't look any cleaner than the original fluid, in fact, it actually looks darker!
The left is the clean/new fluid obviously. The middle is what I drained out today after the drain/fill. And the right (fanta bottle) is the original fluid before the drain/fill.
From my car's service history (according to the Carfax), the transmission has only been serviced once before at 88,000 miles. (The car has 155,000 miles). So, I know the drain/fill I just did will at the very least extend the life of the fluid that's in there.
But I know with regular automatic transmissions, if the car for example had the same mileage and never had any service on the transmission, if you were to change it some of the contaminants might come loose and get pushed around and make their way and get stuck in the valve body or other parts of the tranny and destroy it. I don't know if CVT's are similar in that regard. So basically, I'm looking for advice on if I should let the fluid stay kind of dirty how it is and just continue to regularly service the fluid with drain/fill's every 30-45k miles. Or if I should do more drain/fill's right now until the fluid coming out looks practically brand new.
Please if someone with some more knowledge on these CVT transmissions could help me out and give me some advice here I'd appreciate it. I understand that it might be a tough decision for various reasons, but maybe try thinking about if it were your car, what would you do, especially to prolong the life of the transmission and the car. Any response is greatly appreciated! Thank you.
Here is a video of how the original fluid reacted in a bottle when turned upside down (coating the entire bottle). The new fluid I just pulled out of the car, that extra ~100mL (the little bit drained after the drain/fill) still reacts this same way.
