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What Does Bad Transmission Fluid Look Like Good vs Bad

Created on: 2019-04-08

1A Auto compares dirty and clean transmission fluid.

  1. step 1 :Identifying Good and Bad Transmission Fluid
    • The fluid should be more red than brown
    • Brown fluid indicates it is overheated and dirty and the coolant needs to be flushed
    • Red indicates the fluid is clean

Hey, everyone. Mike from 1A Auto. 2015 Chevy Silverado. We went and checked the transmission fluid and we found that this was an excellent candidate to show you what transmission fluid should not look like.

Pull the dipstick out. Okay. And you can see that it actually almost looks like motor oil. It's brown and dirty. All right, so I'm going to put it into some clean fluid and ideally you can see how nice and red it is. There's the brown that I just wiped off of the original dipstick, and here's the red. Now obviously this is brand new, clean fluid. If your car has got 135,000 miles like this truck does, it's going to be somewhere in between, but it should definitely be more red than brown. Brown indicates that it's been overheated, dirty, and it's time for a flush.

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