I just traded in a 95 Dodge Grand Caravan with 235K miles on it. I bought it new in January 95 for $23,000 tax and all. The owner's manual for the van said that I would only have to change the transmission fluid every 60,000 miles if the vehicle was subjected to "severe use"...otherwise the fluid was good for "life". I decided that the maintence intervals suggested by the smart guys who wrote the book did not make any sense to me and embarked on a program where I changed the oil every 5k miles with synthetic oil and all other fluids at 25k miles.

There is no plug on the torque converter like a Mercedes so when you change the transaxle fluid on a Minivan you have dropped the pan and changed the filter and replaced the pan you disconnect the transmission oil cooler line from the cooler and connect it to a clear plastic hose that takes the purged fluid to a milk bottle. Then you put 6 quarts of ATF+4 in the transaxle and start the motor and run a couple of quarts into the bottle. Then repeat until the fluid is bright red and clear. What I noticed when I did the job is that the fluid was a dull murky red color and that there were a lot of metal flakes in the bottom of the pan especially around the magnet. My guess is that at 60,000 miles the magnet would be so loaded up that it would no longer be effective. Based on those observations I decided to keep up the 25,000 mile plan even though everyone was laughing at me for wasting my time under the car on that creepy crawler getting dirt under my fingernails.

Everybody I knew that had a Chrysler minivan back then only got around 75K miles before they had to go in for the dreaded $2,500 transmission job. Most of them got around $3,000 in trade when they traded in their vans which were in very good condition in 2001 or 2002 for an SUV. They told me that the transaxle on their van had failed forcing them to trade it in and that my minivan would soon be a "Goner".

Eleven years have passed. I had to trade in the minivan last week because the hinge on the passenger door got rusted to the point that the door would no longer close. At the time I turned it in, the motor was still running smooth as silk and the transaxle (which I did have to replace at 165,000 miles because it was leaking in the front seal) was not leaking and shifting perfectly. I am convinced that if it had not gotten rusty at the hinge, it would have gone another 100,000 miles. I traded it in on a 2005 Grand Caravan SXT with 25,000 miles for a total of $17,000 tax and all. (It had a sticker of $27,000 new but they depreciate a lot because minivans are not hot on the market and everybody knows that the transaxles are prone to failure.) All of my friends who traded in their vans for SUVs 5 or 6 years ago are now getting ready to trade in again for a new model.
It is interesting to note that the owner's manual for the 2005 Grand Caravan still says that you don't have to change your transaxle fluid at all unless it is operated under severe conditions and then only at 60,000 mile intervals. I am sticking with the 25,000 mile plan because the trsansaxle is essentially the same as the one in my 95 and I expect to see the same metal flakes and murky fluid at each change.

The main point is that everybody has an axe to grind.

The guy who wrote the article has to make a living writing articles that folks will read and what is more readable than an article about a conspiracy to "flush" the public of its hard earned money through shady practices?

Chrysler Corporation has to sell vehicles and it is a lot easier to sell a vehicle when you claim that it requires very little maintenance. They also want to sell remanufactured transaxles and it is a lot harder to sell them when folks take care of what their vehicles. So they tell you that you have bought "fluid for life" transaxle. They just don't define what "life" is. It is a bad strategy because folks who don't know anything about cars get the perception that their products are unreliable when that's not the case.

The way I see it is that I have been able to avoid 1 depreciation cycle by taking care of my van and that the amount of the depreciation I have avoided is around $20,000. The cost of that maintenance has been about $60.00 every 25,000 miles ($40 per transaxle service, $3.00 for Power steering fluid $3.00 for brake fluid and $10.00 for coolant. I havent needed a fancy machine to do any of those things. Multiply that number times 10 and you get $600. Add $300 to that because you are doing oil changes at 5k instead of 7.5k and you get a total of around $1,000 for all of that extra maintenance. Subtract the $1,000 for the extra maintenance from the $20,000 that went to money heaven and you end up saving around $19,000.
If you are paying someone to do that work then multiply the $1,000 by 3 or 4 and you still end up with a pretty good amount of money saved.

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Tom Hughes
St. Louis
84 300SD
92 300D
86 300SDL