I recently bought an 04 with 150K on it. (Yes I am in Canada) Thats 93,000 Miles for my southern friends! The tranny oil on the dipstick was not as pink as I would have liked to have seen it and it needed an oil change too so off I go to the quick lube. Tranny shifts fine and all is good. A couple of days later, I notice that there is no charge for a tranny filter on my bill. I question this and am told that they do not drop the pan when they do a "transfusion". Great, I am not happy with this , so I buy a filter and another 8 Qts. of oil and do it myself. The tranny had a very thin grey film on the inside of the pan and very little debris on the magnet. Fill her with oil and I get about 2 months, then one day, it's -25C (I am still in Canada) and it won't move. Something has sheared, failed, broken. Whatever, $3,000 later, I have a rebuilt with all the important upgrades that Ford did not think the 04's required.My research into this after the fact, and backed up by the rebuilder is do not flush it if it has not been done before. Chances are you will loosen too much sediment and pump it through your valve body, clutch packs etc. My new tranny has synthetic in it and I will likely drop the pan at 50K and change the filter. Last time, I did not look to see if the torque converter had drain plugs or not. many rear wheel drive tranny's do so it is not a big deal to remove that oil as well. Now that I have the tranny problems sorted, with a warranty, the AC has crapped out on me and believe it or not, we do use that in Canada!!

 

61 2DOR...

Correct...One does not want to do a FLUSH. You only want a fluid change. The problem with doing a flush is that they normally run a cleaning agent thru the tranny. This then disolves and loosens up crud that then floats thru the valve body and can then plug oil holes in the valve body causing oil starvation in the tranny.

The problem with QUICK LUBES is that they can and will use re-processed used lubricants that are stored in bulk tanks.

When I worked at the local Ford dealer, we would not use a Cleaning/Flush agent in any tranny. Just filter replacmennt with a full fluid change. Had several customers that took their business elsewhere after explaining why we WOULD NOT use a flush. We would normally see then about 1,000 miles later with a failed tranny after they had a tranny "FLUSH" performed by somebody else.

A filter change and fluid replacement is completely different from a FLUSH. The FLUSH is the killer.

My nephew is in that boat right now on his 2005 Taurus after a tranny FLUSH a couple of months ago at 115,000 miles. He had no symptoms. Was running down the highway and his RPMs went up and his speed down. Took out the pump. So now he's looking at $3-4K in repairs.