Last night i loosend off the upper cooler line on the Alero, place a plastic tube over the flar, and bled a small ammount of ATF into a bottle, this crap is black, well, almost.
Smells burnt, very sickening.
Trans and fluid has 30,000 miles on it
here is a pic of it for comparison

that is BAAAAAD. Did you fully flush out all that crappy fluid?


-justin

That'* typical of alero tranny'* to do that. Change the fluid about every 15-20k. Those trannys eat themselves alive.

That fluid has been like that for about 5-10k now it seems. GM hasn't been really good with trannys, but they've done a hell of a lot better than Chrysler! I work in a salvage yard and we sell alero, impala and century/monte carlo trannys about 4 times a week. ANd now we can't even get them dismantled fast enough at work, because we only have one dismantler but all the gm tranny'* are in the cars still and have to get dismantled.

The colder you can get the tranny fluid temp the longer it will last and the better it will perform. I think if you can get your temps down to like a 100 degrees you'll get about 300k out of your orignal tranny....Or something to that effect...I wouldn't be spinning your tires too much unless you aren't doing one wheel peels, because that'* what makes the differentials shatter apart and grenade the Tranny casings. That'* why I got my bonne for free.....A kid I knew did one wheel peels in it all the time and shattered the diff. I get a 10k old tranny for 450 and got a good working fun daily driver out of it.

I'm surprised they don't use a better tranny for the 3400 too. If my fluid looked like that I would freak out.

And Don, a little off topic, but I think my Cutlass has an external tranny cooler (4T60-E), but am not sure. Would you happen to know if my particular 4T60-E has one? I know it'* not a Bonne but I figured I'd ask anyways. I'll ask this on the Olds forums too. Thanks!

All 4T60-E'* have external Tranny coolers. At least every one that I have seen before does. My Bonne does. But I won't be using that one much longer. I found one the will fit in front of the radiator that'* made to cool a 26,000 gvw vehicle....

Looking at my radiator it has what looks to be to separate coolers/layers...if that makes sense...so I thought maybe (just wishful thinking) I had one. Would be nice I will be adding one soon, but I went to Pepboys to look at them, and the one recommended for my size car was only 5"x10", which seems too small :? Any suggesstion for places to find coolers? Can you ever get one that is TOO big (is tranny fluid that is TOO cool, bad?)

So wouldn't the be a different version of a 4T60-E? Even cavaliers have tranny coolers on them. Pretty much my veridict is that just about every auto tranny I've seen has had coolers with them.....>But my bonne cooler don't do the greatest....According to my scan tool and my PCM my trans is usually anywhere between 160 to about 205 degrees. Which way to warm for my liking......I don't think that GM has ever done to good with cooling of anything......Personal thought.

I don't really think that you could have fluid too cold.....Unless like it'* frozen or something.....Plus I don't think you could get it cold enough while driving for the tranny to act goofy. You can only cool your tranny to best you can, you'll never get it too cold because of the normal frictiion that the pump and TC in the trans create that makes heat. Don't worry it will always warm itself up.

I moved this too General Chat because it'* good info for everyone, even though this is about Matt'* Alero...should still be here IMO.