Dexron III with additive problems

Hi there,

Recently I took my car to be inspected at Midas. They decided to have a
look at my fluid (on my 97 Accent GS) and offered to top off the fluid.
Turns out that they had put in at least 2.5-3 quarts too much fluid, and
they used Dexron with a diamond (?) additive for total amount unknown.
After about 2oo miles I started having problems. The main problem is
that it started slamming into a lower gear from Overdrive and lockign
up for a split second on the highway when i decelerate a bit from 70,
which is a scary thing. Othertimes when it gets warm it downshifts from
OD to 3rd at around 62, and sometimes downshifts from 3 to 2 around 30 mph.

I took it Midas and told them, with much resistance from their part,
that the fluid was wrong (on top of the overfilling). I got them to
flush out the old fluid, finally. At this point the shop probably wants
me to sign a waiver stating that they are not responsible for the flush
if it has an ill effect on the tranny because of its age - 162k miles.

Since it is an aged tranny and the problems could be other than their
oversight, should i try to proceed as aggressively as i can to fix
whatever is wrong with the thing, or should i suck up my losses if they
can't figure out the problem and/or want to charge me for any additional
repairs (in this case I would get a used tranny or sell it because of
the miles)? It worked beautifully before except it did feel as though
the fluid was starting to get low (went to neutral once or twice on a
sharp slow corner).

Any advice is appreciated and I may use it to show the shop manager at
Midas. I found a thread related called Transmission Fluid changes that
is helpful.

Regards,
john

 

It sounds like you were beginning to have transmission problems prior t
the service. If flushing it with the proper fluid doesn't fix th
problem, they probably didn't do the damage