FleetMag.com |

Are you finding your options becoming more and more limited when one of your light-duty vehicles has transmission troubles? You're not alone. As fuel-efficient--and technologically-complex--six-speed transmissions saturate the light-duty market, fleet maintenance managers may have to re-adjust their repair philosophies.

According to Wayne Colonna, president of Miami, FL-based Automatic Transmission Service Group (ATSG), technical information is quickly becoming a scarce commodity. "The manufacturers are not as forthcoming with the information as they used to be," he explains. "First of all, there are more transmissions coming out now than ever before--we have such a wide variety. And the technology involved has increased dramatically."

REPAIR OR REPLACE?

Colonna has been president of ATSG, an employee-owned technical support service, since only 2001, but in that short time he has seen epic changes in this part of the industry.

"What we're seeing is that the manufacturers are trying to get it to a place where they just want the transmission changed," he says. "They can't find the right--or enough--technical guys to actually support repairs at their own dealerships, so it's much easier for them to just pull the transmission out, put another one in, change the computer, whatever they've got to do."

As a result, very little information is provided by the OEMS about the internal components of the transmission. It is becoming, essentially, a mystery box that technicians open at their own peril. And when they do open it, they find more and more that they can no longer simply replace the faulty component.

Colonna points out the valve body as a particular trouble spot. "The valve body is the component inside the transmission that shifts the transmission through the gears, and it's usually via solenoids that the computer controls," he explains. "The valve body has the shift solenoids, the pressure control solenoids, but the (OEMs) don't really give you a breakdown. They prefer just selling you a whole valve body with the solenoids instead of doing individual component sales.

"More and more of these transmissions are actually putting the computer inside the transmission, and it's usually mounted on the valve body," he continues. "So now, if you need a solenoid, you pretty much have to buy the computer, the valve body assembly and the solenoid. They don't sell it individually.

"So again, we're getting into subcomponent parts replacement instead of being able to replace individual components," he says.

RIGHT TO REBUILD

Colonna has a beef with the "Right to Repair" movement, but not because he thinks it's a bad idea; he just thinks it's distraction from the real issue. Technicians already have a right to repair, he claims, but the OEMs have defined "repairing" as "replacing entire systems."

"It's just a smokescreen, as far as I'm concerned," he says. "For me, what's really happening is, they're taking away the right to rebuild. Sure, you can repair it; change the transmission and you've repaired the car. Sure, you can repair the transmission; change the whole clutch drum assembly for $800--we don't sell the individual components, so buy the whole drum assembly, or the whole pump, or the whole valve body.

"So, they're taking away our right to rebuild, and the prices to try to make those repairs are challenging, especially when the manufacturers provide remanufactured transmissions at a much lower price than you could repair them or rebuild them for, because of the way they price up these subcomponent parts," he says. "So we rely very heavily on aftermarket companies coming out with different repairs and parts to try to get around this problem, as well as any used parts that we call ‘good experienced parts.'"

THE REAL CHALLENGE

If you can get past the problem of being forced to replace entire subcomponents and transmissions instead of actually repairing them, Colonna says that the real challenge for a transmission technician is knowing the ins and outs of transmission fluid.

"The big problem that maintenance people face--and this is a huge problem--is that each car manufacturer is requiring very specific transmission fluid, and very, very expensive transmission fluid," he explains. "Now, if you have a fleet and you're dealing with all of the same type of transmission, well then that's not so bad; you can get yourself a big, 55-gallon drum and you're good to go, because it's the same fluid for all your vehicles. But if you've got a variety of different transmissions, you've got yourself a problem, because if you do not put the right transmission fluid in, you will have slide shift, bumps, chatters and premature failure of the transmission. It's that critical.

"It's a very high-end synthetic fluid, and the computer controls clutch apply and converter clutch apply in various different ways, where there's a tremendous amount of slip on the clutches," he says. "If the fluid is not right sometimes you can feel the frictions clapping on and off, and it feels like a chatter. The clutch will overheat and burn out, you'll feel it."

FILLING FLUID

So, you've got the proper fluid or fluids for the transmissions in your fleet, and your technicians know which fluid goes with which vehicle. But there's still a problem--actually two problems: no dipstick, and, more often than not, no filler tube.

According to Colonna, this is all in a day's work for a transmission technician.

"You have a standpipe, of sorts, in the bottom pan, and there are various combinations; there's one style where it could be a drain plug as well as a check plug," he explains. "In other words, if you looked at the boot pan you'd see a fairly large nut, and in the center of that nut is another nut, with an allen head. If you took the allen head out, you'd look up inside and there's a tall standpipe, and the fluid level is determined by whether or not the oil comes out over the top of that standpipe. If you took the bigger nut off, then it becomes a big hole in the pan and it becomes a drain plug. And sometimes in order to fill it, you actually have to force oil, or push it, up that little standpipe, until the oil comes out over the top of the standpipe."

If you think that sounds complicated, Colonna also describes a layout where there is a "remote fill location" on the side on the transmission, with an access port that would allow the technician to add fluid until it comes out over the top of the standpipe in the pan.

And there's more: "Some guys maybe will pull a vehicle speed sensor out of the case to gain access through the hole to fill in that way," he says.