Preventive maintenance for A604 transmission

I think the Club officers can arrange that. Already saved it to my hard
drive this morning. Thanks!

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

And somehow those didn't trickle down to the dealers?

Chrysler knew darn well what their dealers were doing, did
they suspend any dealers for lying to customers? Did Chrysler
corporation ever override any dealers decision NOT to pay
for replacement of a transmission post-warranty?

There's a conduit of information between the engineering people
and the sales people in any organization. When things work,
the information flows from engineeing to sales - but when a
companies bottom line is at stake that conduit dries up.

All Chrysler had to do was sit on their hands and let their dealers
lie and cheat the public. Which they did. They could have
run a recall campaign if they had wanted to but they chose not
to. Oh sure, a few savvy owners caught wise, but Joe Blow and
Sally Schmoe wouldn't have ever picked up a TSB or engineering
paper to even know about this, let alone tell the dealer that was
claiming they needed a rebuilt transmission that it was a design
flaw.

You seem to think that companies never do anything unless they
have some sort of "conspiracy" setup. Leadership comes from
the top in any organization be it company or government - if the
CEO ignores problems the rank and file gets the message that
this is what they should be doing too.

Absolute rubbish. Anyone can read the Chrysler Service/
Diagnostic Procedures and Refinements manual, from Chrysler,
for this transmission and make their own decisions.

Works both ways, Dan. You display an incomplete knowledge of
what components AREN'T dependent on fluid.

But since you seem to want the info handed to you, here's some
quotes from the trans manual, page 615, to illustrate what I'm
talking about:

12.11 1998 Model Year Refinements

Rear annulus gear material revised from Malleable Iron to 4207 steel for
increased strength

Front carrier hub spline induction hardened for improved spline wear

L/R clutch snap ring/reaction plate is 0.016 thicher to improve durability
and a step added to L/R reaction plate to accept thicker snap ring

There's a lot more than that, but that's OK Dan, go ahead and keep
believing that fluid composition had anything to do with those
design changes.

Because I didn't get my information from a bunch of sales
literature, perhaps?

That's a lot of waffling on your part. How are heat and friction
exactly going to snap a weld? Welds are supposed to be stronger than
the base material that they are welding together. And if that was
true then all the other gears that mesh into that gear should show
evidence of this same wear.

But don't take my advice, I'll just quote another section out of
the transmission manual from Chrysler, page 614, 12.9.5

"Rear carrier: Changes to the cup and plate of the rear carrier allowed
a stronger 360 degree weld instead of the previous segmented weld."

But I'll give you this much, that change wasn't on the sun gear.

And, there are ways to detect flawed welds - are you arguing that
Chrysler shouldn't use these techniques when manufacturing parts?

I didn't. What I claimed is that the difference between ATF+4 and
the fluid it replaced, ATF+3, was not significant enough to add
huge amounts of life to this transmission design.

What I claimed is that if you use ATF+3 and follow the severe duty
schedule (schedule B) for ATF+3 changes, which is 30K miles in
my manual, you get the same level of protection as if you follow
the severe duty schedule for ATF+4 changes, which I believe is
60K miles, but I do not have a service manual for a vehicle that came
factory filled with ATF+4 to check that figure.

I also claimed that Chrysler has an incentive to switch everyone over
to ATF+4 because they have a monopoly on it, and so with this
incentive I don't trust documents from Chrysler that claim that if you
use ATF+4 that your transmission is going to last a lot longer.

I am fully aware that the majority of people don't work on their own
cars and so the economics of the labor to pay someone to change
the transmission fluid may make the cost difference between ATF +3
at shorter change intervals, and ATF+4 at longer change intervals
actually work out that the labor far outweighs fluid costs, so it would
make sense to go with ATF+4

I am also aware Chrysler doesen't sell ATF+3 to it's dealers anymore
so if you get your servicing done at a dealer, you don't have a choice
anyway.

They could have back when this transmission was introduced. They
did with the 3.3/3.8L engine, they went with a very conservative design
using pushrods of all things, rather than a more modern OHC, not that
I'm complaining about that, of course.

And, as for weight and economy, well have you ever lifted the back
seat from a 90's Caravan? The thing weighs a ton. Don't you think it
might have been just a bit smarter to shave those pounds from something
that you take out and put back in a lot more than a transmission? They
did later on with the stow and go seats.

If it didn't exist elsewhere then Lubeguard's "fluid modifier" in a
bottle wouldn't exist. Other people than me have seen that this
is somewhat of a scam to get you to spend your fluid dollars
at Chrysler rather than at the aftermarket. It is unfortunate they
have chosen to go the Dexron/Lubeguard route, instead of simply
buying ATF+3 from the aftermarket.

I have a scan tool as you probably recall, what test would you
like me to run?

Why is it so hard for you to understand how the automobile
industry works? This statement is true for every single auto
manufacturer in the world.

Ted

 

Did that manual really say 4207 or is that just your typo?

 

Oh, look, it's time once again for Ted's little pretense(?) of having
the mentality of an 8-year-old.
Y'see, Ted, sometimes not-very-nice people do not-very-nice things,
like spuriously blaming the user for the failure of an
inadequately-engineered machine. Really *really* bad people do that
even when they know they're fibbing.

Well, gosh, Teddy, you're the one claiming *I* don't know how the auto
industry works...!

Yes, very good. Very *very* good. It seems you do understand after all.
Very fine. So, which side of the argument would you like to take? It'll
have to be one or the other, not both.

I do? How interesting, given that I'm the one saying "ATF+4 was
introduced to extend the useful life of the transmissions, and here's
the engineering paper that proves it", while you're the one saying
"ATF+4 was introduced so Chrysler wouldn't lose money to the
aftermarket fluid vendors."

Well, I'm sure even the likes of you can sound-out the hard words. The
difficulty, Ted, is that not every running change is fully explicated
to allow Ted Mittelstædt to pontificate upon the smokescreen nature of
the engineering paper about ATF+4. The service and diagnostic manuals
are written so as to supply the necessary amount and level of
information to enable a technician to (Class? anyone?) diagnose and
service the transmission. They are _NOT_ engineering records!

Alright, let's copy in sci.engr.tribology and sci.engr.materials and
get a rousing conversation going about lubricity and wear
characteristics of given materials against other given materials,
wanna?

Directly, of course, they won't. One of the things you'll come to
understand as your reading skill develops -- if it ever does -- is that
there is meaning in written texts that goes beyond the individual
definitions of the words strung together to make the sentences and
paragraphs. Unfortunately for the likes of you, this means you must put
on your thinking cap when reading, so that you won't make an ass of
yourself when you blurt out fatuous nonsense that could only come from
disregarding any but the words' individual definitions.

Multiple choice:

If a weld is going to fail, it is most likely to fail when:

A) The welded components are under relatively low levels of mechanical
and thermal stress
B) The welded components are under relatively high levels of mechanical
and thermal stress
C) Neither; the weld is equally likely to fail regardless of mechanical
and thermal stress levels

Sound policy. I follow it religiously.

Not sure why you're giving it to me...I've never claimed the sun gear
wasn't changed.

There certainly are. Most of them do not involve physical attributes
that "anybody can see".

If you can find where I've made any such an argument, I'll send you
$10.

And I provided engineering-level proof from Chrysler that you're wrong.
You then dismissed that proof as a PR exercise on Chrysler's part.
Would you care to recant?

And this claim is without any basis other than your own opinion.

Powertrain packaging and weight restrictions were such that they could
not, as evidenced by the high failure rates and extreme nature of the
failures in most manufacturers' analogous 4-speed automatic transaxles,
compared to those same manufacturers' earlier designs from an era when
there was considerably less pressure to make the transmission as
compact and lightweight as possible *and* provide as many gear ratios
as possible.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Transmissions don't have to meet crash standards,
while seats do. But the seats don't enter into this discussion unless
you're into comparing the stains left by ATF+3 and by ATF+4.

Non-sequitur. There exist many thousands of products that exist for no
good reason. Many hundreds in the automotive fluid-and-chemical sector
alone.

That's certainly your perception, but you'll simply have to excuse
those who perceive you as talking out of your ignorant, myopic ass.

I am sure I don't care what you do with your scan tool, or what you
think it tells you.

Riiiight, Ted. I'm the one who doesn't understand how the auto industry
works.

It's been fun, but I think it's probably getting on for your naptime
now, so...sweet dreams!