Publisher's Note: Welcome to our 43rd edition of Tech Tips Tuesday on "Optimizing Durability with Transmission Fluid Maintenance".  We'll be re-publishing an edition of AMSOIL Tech Tips for you every Tuesday.  Click on the Blog Category "AMSOIL" to see everything published to-date.

Optimizing Durability with Transmission Fluid Maintenance

John Gardner: It's amazing how a transmission can move a vehicle through multiple gears by using fluid pressure. Welcome to this AMSOIL Tech Tip.

We're talking about the transmission pump, that's the heart of the system that develops all the fluid pressure inside of the transmission. Here it is right here. You can see it's located on the front of the transmission, it's actually splined to the torque converter, and the torque converter is then bolted to the engine. It picks up clean fluid, we hope, Len, and then it circulates it through the system. But it's got a pretty tough job to do.

So, if you give me a hand here, I'm going to try to pull one apart. This is pretty cool. Take that bolt out right there and drop this down. Hopefully, all of our yes, all of our vanes and everything's intact. Talk a little bit about the shear and what's going on inside of here.

Len Groom: Well, what this pump actually will do to the fluid on a molecular level, and I don't know that we want to get that crazy today, but what it actually does is it acts like a cleaver. It'll just chop those molecules up. It's very, very tough on the oil. And what ends up happening then is the oil can get thin, and then you can get a pressure loss.

John Gardner: Exactly, and you can see it right here. These are actually a vane pump, and these are vanes right here. And what happens, this is spinning to the torque converter. So if I spin it, you can see with centrifugal force those vanes are going to sling out, and those things are actually pushing the fluid not only around but we're going from a big chamber to a small chamber and we're developing that pressure. Man, shear is a big problem here, also heat.

Now heat, man, when it comes to the torque converter, woo, we're talking about redirecting fluid to multiply torque. Manual transmissions don't even have coolers because they don't need it because of this guy. This is a major problem.

Len Groom: It is, right. You get that thing as a giant oven. It cooks the oil like you can't believe. And if the oil can't hold up to that, it'll start to oxidize, it'll start to break down, and it can create all kinds of problems downstream like varnish and different things.

John Gardner: Big time. So, it's important to change your fluid, and you want to change it right. Make sure you use the Signature Series transmission fluid.

Optimizing Durability with Transmission Fluid Maintenance