Troublesome Toyota Transmission

Synchros shot? Weird noises while shifting? Not sure what needs to be replaced?
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circuitsmith
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Troublesome Toyota Transmission

Post by circuitsmith »

There have been many people on several forums complaining about early failure of the Toyota C59 transmission.
This is the 5-speed used in Corollas, Matrixes and Pontiac Vibes.
The bearings fail at 60-100K miles.

I have a 2006 Matrix 5-speed and the maintenance schedule calls for no trans oil change in 120K miles, except when towing.
I think this might be the cause of many of these failures.
I changed the trans oil in my 4 previous Hondas every 30K miles and never had a trans failure (except in my '81 Accord with a highly modified engine!).

I just changed the trans oil in my '06 Matrix 5-speed at 21K miles.
It was pretty dark, with a metallic sheen and a slightly gritty feel.
Seemed in worse shape than the trans oil in my previous Hondas after 30K miles.
In hindsight I should have changed it at 10K miles.
I plan to change it in another 20K.
I refilled with Valvoline 75W-90 (dino).
I think it was $12 well spent.
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kamesama980
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Re: Troublesome Toyota Transmission

Post by kamesama980 »

extended fluid drain intervals FTW
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Re: Troublesome Toyota Transmission

Post by Rope-Pusher »

kamesama980 wrote:extended fluid drain intervals FTW
Automobile manufacturers play games with minimizing the specified maintenance so that they can win awards for "Cheapest to keep on the road". It has nothing to do with minimizing the risk to the vehicle durability.

It's kinda like seeing who can swim the farthest underwater on one breath. So you win...BFD. So you lose (and it DOES happen)...BFD

I've heard it said that manufacturers use special "Break-In" engine oils that shouldn't be drained too soon, but in general fluids and other lubricants break down with exposure to high temperatures, contaminants, and time. Changing them more often than recommended probably only becomes dangerous when you start to wear out the threads on your oil filter mounting feature or strip out your drain plug.
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Re: Troublesome Toyota Transmission

Post by theholycow »

Rope-Pusher wrote:Automobile manufacturers play games with minimizing the specified maintenance so that they can win awards for "Cheapest to keep on the road". It has nothing to do with minimizing the risk to the vehicle durability.
Ah, but if they take it too far then the vehicle gets a reputation for failure of the parts in question and those responsible for telling the marketing department that it's ok get sacked. Hey, did you approve excessive service intervals on 1980s Caravan automatic transmissions and that's why you're "retired" now? :mrgreen:

Looking at it in context, though, buyers don't pay anywhere near as much attention to service intervals as they do to reputations for longevity...so it behooves manufacturers to choose appropriate intervals.

Anyway, if we start talking about engine oil, the win-win away around that is to stop using a set interval and instead provide an indicator, which many manufacturers do. The one in my GM seems to be accurate despite not directly measuring oil quality (it uses known data to guess). The Chrysler system with an actual sensor should be very effective too.
I've heard it said that manufacturers use special "Break-In" engine oils that shouldn't be drained too soon,
In 2008, VW recommended the first two engine oil changes on a 5,000 mile interval, followed by 10,000 mile intervals forever more. For 2009 models they started offering free maintenance for the first 30,000 miles (or however many)...and they changed the first service interval to 10,000 miles like the rest. I don't think they had changed the way the engines are made, but maybe at least the engineers took a closer look and said it's technically ok.
Changing them more often than recommended probably only becomes dangerous when you start to wear out the threads on your oil filter mounting feature or strip out your drain plug.
It's bad for the environment (not that that ever stopped me), bad for the wallet (that DOES stop me), and bad because it encourages an industry to continue running on myths.
paul34 wrote:Nowadays I use a torque wrench to put the bolt back in to spec so it's never too hard to take off the next time. And I got a new bolt.
:shock: Hardcore.
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Re: Troublesome Toyota Transmission

Post by comingbackdown »

I watch the fluids. All of them. Carefully. For those I can't get to, I use the recommended interval... or more often depending on how I'm driving my vehicle. Oil, coolant, etc. They change enough from their original state, whether it's been the full interval or 1/4 of it, it gets changed. Problem with that is, I'm broke.
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Re: Troublesome Toyota Transmission

Post by Rope-Pusher »

theholycow wrote:[Ah, but if they take it too far then the vehicle gets a reputation for failure of the parts in question and those responsible for telling the marketing department that it's ok get sacked. Hey, did you approve excessive service intervals on 1980s Caravan automatic transmissions and that's why you're "retired" now?
You've got to unnerstan two things - 1) Slushbox engineering was a separate bunch of guise - no cross-polination with the Amish & 2) Nobody loses their job for product blunders. On the contrary, you get respected for coming up with a quick fix and likely to get sooner promotions and bigger pay raises than someone who toils in obscurity and never has to "save the day" by correcting for their own blunders.

and thirdly, the A604 slushbox program didn't suffer from non-conservative service intervals. It suffered from a myriad of other issues, such as:

Capillary flow trans fluid coolers that wouldn't flow ATF in cold climates (ATF=Jello at -20F) and trans fluid had no path to bypass the cooler, so clutches didn't have enough apply pressure and slipped and burned out. How does this get into production? Someone who didn't sweat the details never checked it out in a cold test cell and maybe it never got that cold during the scheduled time for the cold test road trip to Bemidji MN. In later years, cold trip testing was performed in Thompson, Manitoba, where there are many -25 F mornings.

Purchasing found cheaper suppliers for some seals, etc. in the transmission and took the supplier's word that they would be just as good, so they never told engineering about the change.

It doesn't always work out that you hit a home run on the first pitch. When the development program started to fall behind, transmissions built in a pilot run at the transmission plant were shipped to engineering, torn down, retrofitted with parts that were not available for the pilot builds due to late changes and reassembled. Sure, the latest parts were tested, but transmissions built at the transmission plant were dirtier inside, causing problems, but this wasn't found out because the they were all rebuilt in a nice clean engineering lab before testing.

An engineering evaluation in the fleet of corporate lease vehicles was cancelled as part of budget cuts.

Proving ground testing was running behind schedule, so vehicles get tested 24/7, so they never cool down and show you things like cold fluid flow problems, long term corrosion, material degradation over time, etc.

It's a lot like: How do a bunch of guys who were the best in their High School football teams go on to college and the best from the college teams go on to the NFL and yet you still get a team like the Detroit Lions? I blame the manglement!
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Re: Troublesome Toyota Transmission

Post by theholycow »

:lol: Of course I was joking about that question, but that is some seriously interesting insight into how stuff like that goes on. Thank you.
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Re: Troublesome Toyota Transmission

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theholycow wrote::lol: Of course I was joking about that question, but that is some seriously interesting insight into how stuff like that goes on. Thank you.
To the investor, the company is their stock prospectus.
To the politician, the company is a source of jobs for his/her constituency and the tax revenue they produce.
To the general public, the company is the general reputation of products it puts out.
To the customer, the company is the personal experience owning the last product he bought.
To the employee, the company is a community of people who share the same employer. From the inside, you know what you achieved, you know the conditions you worked under to achieve it and you know what it could have been with a little help from the bastards on top. There is such a split between the executives and the employees that, instead of being like an extended family led by the matriarchs & patriarchs, it is more like a feudal serfdom, with a dozen haves calling the shots over thousands of have-nots. It's unimportant what you say you need to do your job. Just go out there and do it with what resources you've been given. The struggle for what meager resources there are binds some employees together, like within a combat platoon. It pits other employees against each other. Overall, it makes the employees like an extended family, with functional and dysfunctional relationships. You look at your company's products and you see the jewels and you see the bird poop, but you know all the inside stories as to how those products got to be what they are.
"Bob knew how to get rid of that road noise, but they didn't want to spend the money."
"Floyd told them how many durability test vehicles he needed, but they gave him less than half and then cut the test drivers overtime budget as well."
"Ron sure learned the hard way about zero clearance motors, but he got the timing belt durability up to 100,000 miles by some clever engineering and by finding a more capable supplier, becoming the industry expert on timing belts."
"Maury saved a lot of "piece cost" money with his innovative transmission design, but it was sensitive to component variations and in the end it bit us in the ass in warranty claims and customer dissatisfaction."
"Ken told them there were intrinsic design issues with the system, but nobody was willing to support the recommendations from his 23 page Design FMEA because they didn't want to go up the ladder with a request for more money. Now customers are left cursing a nameless engineer whenever they experience the system failures he predicted and the warranty claim costs are multiples of what it would have cost to utilize a more robust design, let alone the ill will against the company the failures have created."
Yadda, yadda, yadda. Got to let it go. Too early to start drinking today.
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