The Advantage Auto Repair & Transmisson Guide to Caring for Your Transmission

Most vehicles have automatic transmissions, yet a lot of Tucson drivers only have a fuzzy understanding about what a transmission does. Think back to the last time you rode a bike in Tucson. You started out in a lower gear and shifted to higher gears as you went faster. Down shift for hills, stuff like that. Think of your legs as the engine – there’s an ideal speed you can pedal and you change gears to leverage the work you’re doing.

Lower gears for power on hills or for starting out. Higher gears for more speed. That’s what the automatic transmission does – it automatically starts in lower gears and shifts up to higher gears to go faster on AZ roads. And it automatically shifts back down to climb Tucson hills, pass or start up again.

Vehicle automatic transmissions have certainly gotten more sophisticated in recent years. They have more speeds than before: the base is four speeds, five is very common.

Transmissions are computer controlled these days, with some high end transmissions having two or three computers. Transmissions are engineered to last. But they are also engineered to tighter tolerances. If a portion of the transmission is starved for lubrication, it can lead to failure.

And, as you can imagine, repairing one of these new transmissions at any Tucson service center can be quite costly. That’s why owner’s manuals have a schedule for how often you should change the fluid and what type of fluid to use.

It’s really important for Tucson area drivers to carefully follow the manufacturer’s transmission service schedule.