High Mileage transmission report

[Chris W.]

Thought I'd pass along the fact that it's possible to obtain high miles on a trans with less than optimal fluid changes. I bought my '95 E300D at 140K miles, about 5 years ago. I changed the trans fluid and filter with synthetic at that time.

Flash forward to last weekend, now at 316K miles, I've been feeling guilty, so I changed trans fluid and filter again. Yeah, I know I should have done it much sooner. But the pan was almost surgically clean with only a very, very fine (thin) layer of gray silt coating about 1/2 the bottom of the pan. I could still see the black paint overspray spots from the original mfr exterior paint on the bottom of the rest of the pan before I wiped the silt out. Old fluid looked and smelled fine.

Used Amsoil synthetic universal for this change. Hopefully I'll be good to go for another 100K or so. I'm not recommending such long intervals, but I'm definitely recommending synthetic!

Rgds,
Chris W.
'95 E300D, 316K

[layback40]

In another 300k it will be a "high mileage" trans. Hope you do a few changes in that time though!!!