Anyone even remotely involved with cars has heard this kind of story: Someone they know downloaded their transmission and their transmission failed within weeks or even days.

The urban legend behind this is that the “sludge” is all that held the transmission together and once it was removed with a shock, the transmission had no chance of surviving.

The story goes like this:

Jim was having a transmission problem, let’s just say he was slow in the morning and slipped on takeoff from a stop every now and then when it was hot.

Now Jim has a brother-in-law named Bob who used to work on cars, do his own adjustments and oil changes, etc. When Jim mentioned the problem he was having to Bob, his immediate response was, “You need that transsexual to blush.”

Of course, Jim doesn’t really know anything about a car, much less an automatic transmission blindly follows his brother-in-law’s advice. After all, Bob surely knows everything about cars, even though he hasn’t worked on one for over twenty years.

Jim dutifully takes his car to the local lubrication spot to have it flushed and engine oil changed while he’s there. Jim gets his broadcast flush, pays, and is on his way.

At first, you notice perhaps a slight improvement in performance, but your transmission still exhibits most of the original symptoms.

About two weeks later, Jim drives to work and stops to pay a toll. When you try to get away from the toll booth, the unthinkable happens: the car just accelerates and goes nowhere, as if it were in neutral. Jim moves the gear stick low and can limp his car to the side of the road and wait for a tow truck to take him to a transmission shop.

What happened?

Here’s a list of reasons why the streaming download myth exists:

• The myth is spread by people who claim to be experts. I’ve even heard of transmission repair shops contributing to the myth in hopes of scaring potential customers into checking their transmission instead of maintaining it.
• There are thousands of “internet experts” promoting misinformation – it’s really a case of “monkey go, monkey go” on steroids!
• There may have been a time in the early days of automatic transmissions when failure after a shock was more common, perhaps due to outdated friction material and transmission fluid technology during the 1950s and 1960s. , but this was before my time, so I can’t really argue with the legitimacy of the possibility. However, I can say with certainty that it is not a problem with 99.9% of vehicles in service today. If the owner’s manual is in the glove compartment and it’s not painted on a cave wall, it’s probably ready.
• “Sludge” is all that held the transmission together and when cleaned, the trans is going to fail immediately. Guess what? If you have mud in your transmission, it is already bad and in need of repair.
• Every now and then a flush is performed, usually in a quick-lube operation, and the transmission does not refill properly, causing a failure shortly thereafter. Of course, the wrong fluid level is not recognized as the culprit, the transmission discharge is! Many automatic transmissions have fairly complicated fluid level checking and filling procedures that are best left to a transmission repair expert.
• People have unrealistic expectations. A transmission flush is no more likely to fix a faulty transmission than an engine oil change to fix a major internal engine problem. Both are great things to do on a regular basis, but they are maintenance, not a solution to a problem.
• The reality is that most people don’t think about their broadcasts until the day they have a problem. Jim’s broadcast was on borrowed time; It was going to fail anyway, but now that it has, it is going to perpetuate the myth. If you ever hear someone mention a streaming download, they’re going to proclaim, “I did it to myself and my stream blew up in a month!”

I have been in the transmission repair industry since 1987 and can honestly say that I cannot recall a single time when I saw a transmission in good condition being flushed or fluid changed and subsequently had a problem. A transmission flush is the best maintenance you can do to extend the life of your automatic transmission – don’t miss out on the benefits due to the nonsense around changing transmission fluid!