Jabberwock

What mileage or age does a car maker like Lexus consider usable life of vehicle like an LS430? 125K? 150k? 250? 300K? It would be nice to have a formal answer on that.

JimsGX

Blackstone responded to my two questions today. Below are my questions and their responses...

Question #1:
The levels of iron, copper, lead and tin are all elevated in the
report. Would it have done any harm to continue running this oil in my
transmission? I don't know how many PPM the levels would need to be at
to consider them harmful to the transmission if I were to continue to
run it. Do these elements act as an abrasive when they're suspended in
the oil at certain PPM?

Blackstone Response:
It's possible this oil could have been left in use without any damage being done to the transmission. Some types of transmission are more sensitive to others when it comes to wear. The accumulated wear metals do make the oil abrasive though we don't know the exact point at which that happens.

Question #2:
For the universal averages, how are those established? What is the
point of reference / baseline you're referencing for those numbers?

Blackstone Response:
The universal averages show average wear from all normal looking Toyota automatic transmissions we have seen. If we are given miles on the oil, we average that too and for this transmission, the average oil run is about 25,000 miles.

Jabberwock

Very interesting. Thanks for posting the new info.

Stu

"It's possible this oil could have been left in use without any damage being done to the transmission. Some types of transmission are more sensitive to others when it comes to wear. The accumulated wear metals do make the oil abrasive though we don't know the exact point at which that happens."

not very precise.

" the average oil run is about 25,000 miles." what does this mean?

caddyowner

Sounds like their legal counsel advised them to be guarded in responding to inquiries.

Lust4Lexus

Yeah- what does that mean? does it mean the average sample they have tested has been about 25k miles? Or the average lifespan of the oil is 25k. I can't imagine they are saying the latter.

Jabberwock

My guess is that the average mileage on tran fluid sent in for analysis is 25k.

fergo308

^^^ Agreed,that how it reads to me. They do admit that the amount of material held in suspension will have abrasive properties,but they don't say how bad that would be if it was left in the box.
Personally,I reckon that any level of abrasiveness inside a transmission is less than ideal. Clutch packs wear away fast enough in hard driven cars as it is. leaving crap in there to help that along is not in your best interest.

I've read this entire thread through and my personal take on it is that it's fine to change the oil if the procedure is carried out correctly at any mileage. Noone knows at what time the oil is worn out,and part of that is related to driving style,so it can be variable by a quite wide margin.
I say if you feel the oil is suspect,change it,using the correct method.

With all the talk of drain and refill changes,a much more thorough method of changing the oil has been completely missed - direct exchange with the system running.
Most serious workshops will have a fluid exchange machine. The cooler lines running to the front of the car are broken into,and a reservoir in the machine filled with new fluid. the machine then pumps in a metered amount of fluid to replace what the car pumps out as it's running... total fluid replacement.


Justin...

abs

Hi JimsGX -

I went back and looked again at the .pdf you posted and realized a few things now that we understand what the universal averages mean for this fluid. I've noticed that many of the additive levels are much lower than the averages, in particular the zinc, but also the phosphorus, calcium and boron. All of these elements are components of additives used in engine oil and I'm assuming serve a similar purpose in the transmission fluid. All of the wear metals are high and many of them are more than 4x higher than the universal averages. If the wear rate was linear, you would expect your numbers to be about 4x the average, 25,000 miles to 100,000 miles. As an example, the lead levels are about 9x higher and the copper around 5x higher. What this tells me is that as wear metals accumulate in the fluid, as the viscosity drops and as the additives are used up, the rate of wear increases.

Blackstone's comments with regard to at which point these variations become an issue doesn't surprise me at all. They have not conducted stress testing on this transmission type with this fluid type to know at what threshold the transmission is truly at risk. All they can do is show the fact based information with respect to the measurable attributes of the fluid and let you as the owner (and by extension all of us on this message board) draw conclusions as to what this means. The possibility does exist that with a zinc level of 8 (instead of 54) is still sufficient to protect the sliding parts in the transmission. Likewise it is also possible that higher levels of wear metals (at an accelerated rate) were planned for by Toyota and also not a problem. Blackstone simply does not have the proper engineering information to draw that conclusion and, frankly, neither do we.

On the other hand, the report does allow us to draw some conclusions. For example, we can clearly see that the additive pack is being used up and that some of the additive levels are quite low relative to the universal averages. We also can see that the wear metals are up and are increasing in at a non-linear rate relative to the universal average rates. We can also see that the viscosity is low and is outside the lower bound for the normal range. These are the facts which lead me to draw a conclusion. In my opinion, the fluid is past it's usable life at 100k miles.

At the moment, we don't have enough samples/data points to draw any conclusions about what mileage might be an "optimal" mileage to change the fluid other than to say it looks like 100k is too many miles. I would suggest that as many of us as possible submit samples of our transmission fluid for testing to allow all of us to come to some point of view as to how many miles can be reasonably driven on the OEM transmission fluid before a complete fluid exchange is conducted.

JimsGX, thanks for taking action for all of us, this is very insightful information and hopefully the start of additional fact based analysis.

Regards,

Andrew

Jabberwock

Andrew - thanks for an insightful and cogent analysis. I typically keep my cars 10 years and put on 135-150k miles by then. This topic is interesting to me because I would really like to avoid having to put a $6000 trans rebuild into my LS at some point in the future.

So here is my question for Toyota - they say trans fluid in the 06 LS is lifetime - fine... but what do they consider the useful life of the trans?...100, 150, 200K miles? If they expect me to have to replace my transmission at 150k I'd much rather proactively pay for a couple of fluid changes and have it last another 50K longer.

Playdrv4me

Brilliant analysis, Andrew. I went back and reviewed the report with your insight and it made quite a bit more sense to me. One would assume that every single word that goes into a vehicle ownership manual would be heavily scrutinized before ever being printed. Given that, I think that it speaks volumes that for many of the early 2004 cars, manuals were still being included with the old 60k mile transmission service interval. It was not until later in 2004 that Toyota suddenly changed their position to a lifetime fill, even backdating it to cars that clearly came with the previous service indication (but withOUT requiring the old manuals to be replaced).

Since Lexus does not include scheduled maintenance with their vehicles, one could make the legitimate point of: "Wouldn't it be counter-intuitive to Toyota's profit margins and those of their dealers to LESSEN the number of service items the customer pays for?". Yes, if you are looking at the smaller picture, but the mid-2000s are the point where most other luxury manufacturers had implemented or were beginning to implement "lifetime fill" methodologies. Since Lexus clientele by and large prefer to be as little involved with their vehicle as possible, minimizing major services would place Lexus on par with its competitors for the purpose of comparison... i.e. the customer who walks in to the sales floor and states "BMW doesn't require ANY transmission service for the life-time of the car so why does Lexus require it?". So quite simply, it makes them competitive with all the other manufacturers moving to these silly lifetime or 100k fills, and sells more cars or at least prevents sales from being lost.

So as far as I'm concerned, just because you may be able to stress test a fluid out to 100k or the life of the car, does not mean that it is the ideal situation. With the minimal cost of a fluid flush (which my Lexus dealer specifically made clear would NOT void any powertrain warranty or they would NOT offer it in violation of corporate policy), it just makes sense to do.

Jabberwock

Playdrv4me - agree. Sadly the the Lexus assertion on its lifetime Tranny fluid very likely has more to do with brand competitiveness and marketing than with any engineering changes or improvements. I think I am going to assume that the lifetime fluid is good thru 60k miles and ask my dealer to change it. I want to make sure the "lifetime" on my LS430 and its very expensive transmission is going to be way more than 100k.

Maybe in a few years the manufactures will say the engine oil is lifetime also - with today's engines and high quality synthetic oil you could probably stretch the engine oil out to 100k - before the oil got so bad and totally ganks the engine. Wouldn't that be a similar example of the same type of reasoning as the supposedly "lifetime" tranny fluid.

Stu

"Wouldn't it be counter-intuitive to Toyota's profit margins and those of their dealers to LESSEN the number of service items the customer pays for?"


Here is my theory ( ah hem .... )

Don't forget that Toyota's customer is the new car buyer ONLY, and they are interested mainly in ensuring they minimize their expense exposure while the car is covered by the Toyota warranty. They know even without a fluid change, most transmissions will last the length of the warranty and beyond, so it becomes a lifetime fluid.

Down the road, the warranty expires and the car is sold by the original owner. Someone bought the car used - with no warranty, and then the transmission fails. The current owner is on the hook for the bill, ( not Toyota ) and it would be impossible to prove the failure was cause by failure of the "lifetime fluid".

There are too many other possible causes for tranny failure at 120,000 miles, and yes, Toyota missed being able to charge for one or two fluid changes .... but they do get to rebuild/replace the transmission - so they come out OK.

caddyowner

I remain convinced that a proper trans fluid replacement at a mileage less than 100K is appropriate. The old U.S. standard of 30-50K is probably too soon, unless the car has seen severe duty. 100K is probably too high, unless the car has seen about 25K of easy highway miles per year. I think 60-75K sounds about right. Since my car is an 05 and for the first 5 years it only saw about 6K miles per year, I will probably target my trans fluid change for the 60K service visit. That should be next spring / summer at my current usage.

IMO, TANSTAALF (there ain't no such thing as a lifetime fluid)

V8_Fan

Just had my '05's tranny fluid changed at 30K mi w/ 6 qts of Toyota WS (total capacity according to the FSM is around 5.6 qts). I had it changed on age rather than miles, as fluids oxidize over time, etc. 5 yrs is like driving 60K mi. I don't tow, but the three things that wear out prematurly here in AZ are rubber (belts; serp belt lasts only 45K mi), fluids (extreme heat is murder on fluids), and batteries (heat increases the chemical reaction rate).

At any rate, if you're worrying about how long the fluid will last, just change it! And if the tranny ever dies prematurely, you know the dealer can't pin the blame on improper maintenance since you had the fluid changed w/ OEM fluid and it was serviced by the dealer.