I'm in college with no truck (looking for a '70's one, stick, maybe F-250?--let me know), so my only chance to work on anything is at home, on a 1990 Chevy Suburban (sorry, guys) with not much of a real shop, and I'm new at this. How hard is it to do my own transmission fluid and a full lube job myself? Or do you guys take that piddledy stuff to the shop and do the fun stuff at home?

Al

 

I do a full lube job once a year on my vehicles and change tranny fluid only when necessary. It is too easy to get a bit of grit or an air bubble up in the tranny. I run inline transmission filters on my trannies and also on my Power Steering units. I have heard that the most effective way to change transmission fluid is to pull off a cooler hose and run the trans in neutral untill it starts to bubble then run a few cans of fluid thru it till it runs clean. then shut it down and connect the line back up and fill normally. This flushes all of the old fluid out of the converter also. I have not tried this personally but it was a method given to me by an old professional mechanic that worked on tons of Fords and a few Mopars. I don't know if it would work on a GM. Without a load on the tranny the bushings and gears should be just fine thru this process. The rest of the time I take my vehicles to a Valvoline lube shop but they don't do a very good job. I hadn't done a complete job on one of my vehicles b4 and the first time I did I found that even tho they said they were checking the diff it showed only a weep when I got to it, no tool marks in the plug or oil around the plug threads and it was probably at least an inch and a half low on fluid.