Okay my mom bought her Mustang back in the spring of '01 with ~33k miles. Currently it has ~121k miles on it, and she hasn't done a damm thing as far as regular maintenance and whatnot. So basically, she has the same fluid and filter today as she did back in '01. I know, it's a move, but yeah. Don't worry I had my car for, like, 3 months and got a trans flush done, haha...

But anyway... some people say it's okay to go ahead and do the flush, and some say a few pan drops and filter changes would be better than a straight up complete flush and filter change.

What does TMS think?

2000 V6 4R70W btw.

 

Drop the pan.
And when you say nothing was maintained please tell me she had the oil changed.

 

Granite its a lot of trouble to do unless you have a drain plug in your tranny pan, this is what I did and would recommend. I picked up 5 gallons of tranny fluid to completely flush out all the factory fluid. (Mobil 1's ATF is MERCON V rated and thats what I recommend). I dropped the pan, put pan back on with 6 bolts(just enough to hold it up and seal it), replaced the amount of fluid that drained out, let the car run a couple minutes(in park), drop the pan again, replace the fluid again, and repeated this till all the factory fluid was flushed out. I had custom tranny fluid made that was dyed green so I could verify that all the old stuff was flushed out but if you go through 5 gallons of new stuff that will get 80 to 90% of the old fluid out.

 

Yes the oil got changed....... usually (several times late).

I feel bad for that car. She wants to keep it and dump the money into it to keep it running longer but I keep hearing bad stuff about changing fluid this long into its run.

 

Just check for metal in the fluid. You might be alright but you wont know until you change it. Hope it goes well.

 

thanks. I wish she could just buy a new car honestly. I'd never own it myself. I remember one time about a year ago my dad offered me to buy it since my last car was old. I declined... there wasn't a reason to get rid of my old Honda... it had over 250,000 miles but it drove fine. I'm glad I never took over payments. She only has a year to go too... I think she wants to go a while without payments though and not enter another 6 year financing for a new car tho. Trade in would pay off the balance left, or at least most of it, I'm sure... but like I said, I don't think she wants to do a new set of payments.

 

If it isnt broken then dont throw money at it. Keep it on the road and just enjoy a few years without finance.