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Old 09-11-2004, 10:54 AM
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Southern Southern is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Carol Stream, Il, USA
Posts: 605
Nice write up Gilly, thanks for sharing Mercedes thoughts on 722.6 transmissions.

I have changed my trans fluid at 80K miles. I found a thin layer of sludge on the bottom of the pan. I also installed the pan magnet since my trans is an early build. The main problem I see with the "fill for life" attitude is that Mercedes has used a very small transmission filter for this vehicle. If I left the original trans fluid in the vehicle, eventually the sludge could have plugged up the filter and overheated the transmission causing an early death (in my opinion).

I usually keep my vehicles for 200K miles at which point the body is falling apart. The engine and transmissions were original and running strong on the last two vehicles that I donated. My theory is to replace fluids and filters on a scheduled bassis. With synthetic fluids I have extended the intervals out but still replace them because the filters and fluids still get contaminated.

If synthetic water existed would the "fill for life" advocates never change their bath water?
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1998 Mercedes E320, 200K Miles
2001 Acura 3.2TL, 178K Miles
1992 Chevy Astro, 205K Miles
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