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Comment by toast0 | Hacker News Reader

At least in my area, the problem is labor costs. If you can do things yourself, it's great. If you need a mechanic to do it, you're looking at a big expense, because mechanic labor is expensive and there's a lot more covers and harder to get to parts these days. 'Maintenance free' transmissions are very common in newer cars, and they do tend to need less maintenance, but when they do, there's often not a great way to access them. Etc.

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> 'Maintenance free' transmissions are very common in newer cars

I take advantage to your comment to write this PSA (that probably you already know):

All transmissions require maintenance, and even manual ones. Those automatic tagged as 'maintenance free' from the brand aren't, and if you call the manufacturer of that transmission, Getrag, ZF, or whatever it is, they should say which ATF and filters it needs and in what interval.

If you do maintenance with an independent technician (not a dealership or a "Jiffy Lube") with some good reputation, they probably help with that

How does find a phone number for General Motors that lets someone talk to the person who knows these details and is both willing and able to relay them?

[insert rant here about BMW's "lifetime" fluid in the 4L30E that they used in E36s]

I'm not a mechanic, but they can see the brand and model on the part and call the manufacture or just google it. If it's the same as the car's brand, or if they don't give any information, you can check forums to get that information, otherwise sometimes they can find this information in their AutoData service.

Checking that state of the fluid isn't difficult, as is bright red when it's new, and turns more and more brown when it's used, and it's mostly used normally between 50k and 100l AFAIK.

Buying the required fluid, and filter if needed, is as easy as looking it in the internet or going your local AutoZone, O'Reillys, AAP, or whatever you have near btw

> Checking that state of the fluid isn't difficult, as is bright red when it's new, and turns more and more brown when it's used, and it's mostly used normally between 50k and 100l AFAIK.

Yeah, but getting to the fluid to see it is hard. They stopped putting in dipsticks, so hopefully there's a check plug somewhere you can get to.

Is the check plug really even necessary for a trans fluid swap a lot of the time?

I just drain mines and refill to specified amount, I've never once cared for a check plug and just change it every ~50k miles on most of my cars, regardless of color. It's usually not an expensive fluid.

With neither a dip stick nor a check plug, how does one know how that the transmission contains the "specified amount"?

I mean: Automotive fluids tend to shrink over time, for a wide variety of reasons. (And sometimes, they get bigger, which is usually even worse.)

How do you know that it has the correct level?

On most cars you simply fill till it starts leaking out of the fill hole - like changing oil, it normally doesn't require a precision fill, just close enough.

1. The drain hole is below the fill hole - open drain hole and empty using good old fashioned gravity.

2. Close drain hole.

3. Open fill hole.

4. Fill till it starts leaking out the fill hole.

5. Close the fill hole.

Not especially complex most of the time! Transmission fluid does not really shrink much over time, its a sealed system and it doesn't burn off the way engine oil can. Just doing it at regular intervals like 50k miles is absolutely fine on a lot of cars. If you really do care about hitting some specific quantity of fluid - you know exactly how much you are pouring into the fill hole, you can even measure exactly what came out the drain hole, but this probably is not remotely necessary.

Fascinating.

On the E36, which has no prescribed transmission service interval or dip stick, there are two transmission sumps -- and only one of them has a drain plug. Replacing the fluid means pulling one sump off completely...and pre-filling it prior to reinstallation.

On the Honda, which has a regular interval for transmission fluids and a dip stick, the fill plug is on top of the transmission. It would be a bad thing to fill it to that level. (I just refill using the dip stick tube.)

Also, I'd like to add that I am envious of the fact that you have never experienced a leak in any automatic transmission.

Some fluids are proprietary, like Nissan’s earlier CVT oil which probably costs more than printer ink. Using some near-beer brand often resulted transmission failure.

If its much more than 100 bucks, I'd be pretty surprised, honestly. A quick google shows most Nissan CVT fluids (even the OEM "unicorn tears") at ~80 dollars for the usual 5 quarts etc. Virtually all the "proprietary" fluids are just rebranded mainstream brands (castrol/Valvoline etc etc), most car OEMs are not in the business of manufacturing their raw fluids themselves.

I'm not a mechanic, either. Googling is easy, and also is often imprecise.

That's why I was wondering how to contact GM about the 4L30E that they built and sold to BMW, as was suggested.

> ATF and filters it needs

Not all modern transmissions have a filter

Modern cars aren't designed to be easy to work on which really inflates the labor hours required for even trivial issues.

The my front left indicator light went on my BMW i3. Tried looking up the specs for the bulb to buy a new one. Of course it wasn't that simple. Oh boy was I naive.

No, it required a whole new headlight assembly, $800 plus labor.

Funnily enough, the car got totalled shortly after, before I had decided to go ahead with the repair. Someone hit my SO as she was in a roundabout, and the impact moved the car several meters. Cracked the carbon fiber chassis. Estimated repair cost was 1.5x price of a new car.

So, never got the pleasure of finding out how much labor would have been for replacing the headlight unit. I'm assuming it would have been a lot more than for replacing a light bulb...

Similar thing happened to me on my GTI, the Xenon bulb replacements weren’t too expensive but replacing it literally required disassembling a large portion of the front end of the car. I couldn’t believe it.

I have been quoted 500$ to fix a stuck gascap cover, because apparently the spring is inside and attached to the rear body panel, and would require a major part replacement.

Although im starting to suspect my mechanic is taking me for a ride

On my ford it's three bolts and two cables and you can take the headlight unit out, 5 minutes work tops. And that's with LED lights which should never be replaced (by the owner as they always need calibration). On my previous one it was even easier to let them stay in and move your hand in an awkward position to get the job done.

Nice. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, had the unit itself been reasonably priced.

My neighbor has BMW z3. He has same story about its lights, which fail more than you'd expect.

Also: It's a hard top convertible. The mechanicism stopped fully opening or closing. Bummer. Two repair shops gave ridiculous quotes to troubleshoot and repair.

Using a scanner (generic OBD II scanner with BMW's specific codes), we narrowed the search. The ultimate fix was just two $15 switches. Being noobs, it took us some effort to detach and reattach the hard top.

I don't mind the labor effort (costs). It is a BMW after all. But it's ridiculous that these cars can't report their failing electronic bits.

$800 is steep.

I have a 2018 Subaru Outback. I got in a fender bender that caused the right front headlight unit to snap near the top bolt where it attached to the car. I found out when my car failed inspection.

I called the dealership and they quoted me $500 just for the headlamp. I went on rock auto and bought one for $250 and installed it. I had to take the front bumper off the car to install the headlamp. Passed inspection after I installed it though so it was all good. Just can’t believe they were marking up parts like that.

One Rockauto tip is to Google for a 5% discount code and enter it at checkout. I’ve never not found one.

I had no idea they did discounts Thanks for the tip!

Damn, crash tests should include repair costs for many types of minor accidents. Maybe we will see two piece rear bumpers and sacrificial headlight lenses.

right, the $42K Rivian fender bender was a particularly egregious example. https://www.theautopian.com/heres-why-that-rivian-r1t-repair...

oh my god.

what exactly were the rivian engineers thinking?

They weren't thinking about repairability. They were trying to get smaller BOMs and reduced assembly costs.

Where I live a bad year costs $2000 in maintenance costs and usually it is less. Investing the cost of a new car in SPY would give the same amount every year, compounding and virtually tax free*

* You control when you sell and pay tax, sell in small amounts when not working to minimize tax, compounding gains are not taxed until sale, death allows tax free passing to children.

I wont even get into salary sacrifice!

It was once typical for commonly occurring repair problems (replacing accessories like alternators and starters) that the labor costs pretty much equaled to the cost of parts. It was different for critical things like engines and transmissions but I think for a long time losing an engineer or transmission totaled the car.

It would be nice if I could "work with" a mechanic. Pay 1/4 the labor cost and she guides me (I also rent tools and shop time from her so it's more like 1/2).

if anyone was even willing to do this for paid service, it'd be more like at least 150% of the labor costs.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...

if you can find a good mechanic friend, and pay with beer and pizza, you'd be much more likely to be successful.

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