Auto transmission drain bolt?

A

Aaron

Active Member
11
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Ok, 88,000 miles are here and the car (2012 LX) is calling for ATF Fluid. The only articles I have seen are for the manual transmission. Who knows which bolt is the ATF drain bolt? I'll take a pic if I figure it out on my own.
 
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Man that's a lot of driving! The bolt will look like this...towards the front right side. Pic of the auto accord below.

image.jpg

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You can see the ATF drain bolt from the front with the shield still on.
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And with the shield off.
IMG_9841.JPG


Also, my cracked cruise cancel button I've talked about in the past.
CRW_9845.JPG


And finally. 88,515 and counting.
CRW_9847.JPG
 
Quite the miles in a year man! wow! Drain and fill! 3 bottles I believe. Make sure to get a new crush washer for the bolt if you can. I have reused mine a couple times and it seems to seal fine though.

If you want to change out most of the fluid since you are only changing the fluid in the converter, make sure to take the car for a short drive before you do a second drain and fill. The dealership will just put the plug back in and rev it a few times in neutral. A short drive is much better to cycle the fluid. 3-4 drain and fills will cycle almost all of the fluid. If it's been a while do 2 cycles. I find that my trans likes the fresh fluid a lot.

I try to hit a D/F every 15k. Im ridiculous.
 
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Well. I am impressed. Please explain your experiences of driving a Civic so much so fast. I'm on track to average 5,000 a year, almost all city driving. Any problems or anything?


Edit: Just saw the other posts you've made about your work commute. I bet you have the highest mileage 2012 Civic in the country,maybe the world.
 
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Nix said:
Quite the miles in a year man! wow! Drain and fill! 3 bottles I believe. Make sure to get a new crush washer for the bolt if you can. I have reused mine a couple times and it seems to seal fine though.

If you want to change out most of the fluid since you are only changing the fluid in the converter, make sure to take the car for a short drive before you do a second drain and fill. The dealership will just put the plug back in and rev it a few times in neutral. A short drive is much better to cycle the fluid. 3-4 drain and fills will cycle almost all of the fluid. If it's been a while do 2 cycles. I find that my trans likes the fresh fluid a lot.

I try to hit a D/F every 15k. Im ridiculous.
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I'm less than a 1000k from my 15000k service and want to change my AT fluid...... Are you saying I should drain and refill with new fluid 4 times(after driving in between each D/F?).
 
I'm not sure about doing the hose thing, being that I'm a loner when it comes time to work on my car, and don't see how I could do it, and keep control of the fluid "top off". So multi flushes will be the way for me to go. Now it's how many times?
Nix , "3-4 drain and fills will cycle almost all of the fluid. If it's been a while do 2 cycles." This is a little confusing as it sounds like only 2 if it's been a while. Maybe it means a short while?
 
In a previous car, I did it twice. Drain, fill.... drove car for like a week.... drain, fill. The 2nd drain looked much better than the 1st.
 
on a car that shifts fine that's a waste of time and money to do it so short.

you can do it every engine oil change 3 or 4 times and then go onto a drain and fill cycle every 15-30k depending on the amount of heat and shifts your car does in those miles.

there is a chart available online that shows how much new fluid is entered into the trans per drain and fill, IIRC it says 8 drains and fills gets you 90% new fluid.

if you do back to back drains the every dump after the first you're tossing new fluid. at least get 3-5k miles out of it.
 
Yeah. I change mine quite often even though I know it's unnecessary but I had a significant improvement in the cars behavior so I just kept up on it. If the fluid is real dirty on the first change Ill drive it a bit and then do a second one. If your car is pretty new and doesn't have a ton of miles one drain and fill should be fine. I base it on the color/appearance of the fluid.

I got my car used so im pretty sure they drove the crap out of it and never changed a thing until I got it. The air filter was black and so was the oil. First thing I did was try and change out every filter and fluid I could. I did 4 drain and fills with about 1k between them and it took that long for the fluid to start coming out a non-disgusting color. The shifts and hesitation were much improved.

Mileage break down if that helps understand what ive been up to: Im just under 75K now, these are approximate. I have a brother in law who works at Honda so I ran stuff by him and some of the other techs. They thought it was a little overkill but not totally unreasonable based on the condition of the car. I was also having trans issues. They got better and better with each change.

30k - Just got the car and everything was filthy, worn out, used up, destroyed. Changed everything I could immediately. (1 D&F)
31K - 1 D&F :Trans fluid is still dark/dirty looking
32K - 1 D&F : Starting to look not ruined.
33K - 1 D&F, & oil change. The oil still looked bad after the first change and I just wanted to get rid of all the old crap I could. The trans fluid finally drained out a "new" ish color.

This is also about the time that honda switched from their Z1 ATF to the new DW-1. I didn't mind buying a case of fluid and doing the changes to swap most of the old fluid out to the new spec.


45k - 1 D&F

60k - 1 D&F

Current mileage is 72k and im planning on doing a D&F just before and probably right after the Dragon meet since I suspect it will get some hard useage. The trans is what failed on my old accord so im a little anal about changing the fluid often on this one. Also at only $12 and less than 10min I don't mind doing it.


Monk - you probably don't even need to do it but I think with such low miles one drain and fill would be fine.
 
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OK... I'll at least start doing 1 D&F changes with my 5k services.
 
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