You do realize that most dealers get their parts from local parts stores?
The Carquest near me supplies parts to about six local dealers in the area that I know of.
I see their delivery trucks in the dealers lots all the time.
Napa does the same thing.
Tester
No. Maybe add $3600,
So you find Scotty Kilmer to be credible?
And you find the Lexus dealer to NOT be credible?
In my opinion Scotty Kilmer belongs on the funny farm.
I think itās all part of an act. He has a lot of followers.
Depends on the vehicle. I know a guy who owns a well respected transmission shop and he has contracts with many dealers that they outsource a lot of their transmission work to. He has a very expensive fluid exchange machines, but some vehicles itās NOT recommended. Drain and fill only.
IMO the fluid exchange problem is largely due to allowed maximum pressures in the transmission. Honda recommended drain and fill 3 times to accomplish a full fluid exchange because many fluid exchange systems used pressures high enough to damage parts inside their ATs. That would not be the case for all cars and the fluid exchange systems may have improved since 2005 when my Accord was built.
Guys, do you know why Iām having a hard time with this topic?
Because Iām getting conflicted information from dealers, as well as from regular people who own the Lexus IS.
For instance, Toyota said I need a transmission exchange at 60,000 miles.
Lexus said I donāt need a transmission exchange until 95,000 miles.
Another Lexus dealer told me the transmission is sealed and never needs to be serviced, ever, and that they wonāt service the car where it relates to the transmission, unless the transmission starts to give trouble, which is rare.
Then on an old thread from the Lexus forum Iām seeing this:
So I hope you guys understand why Iām so confused.
No worries, this is indeed a confusing topic. Iād have no idea what to do in that situation. GM some years ago as I recall issued a service bulletin to never flush their automatic transmissions. Iām presuming they are not saying that now. Perhaps the meaning of āflushā has changed.
Consider more important situations in life: At what age should you prepare a will? Is a college degree necessary? At what age is it too late to get married?
There are no written rules, you are receiving opinion.
The car going in on Thursday for transmission fluid exchange. Iām just going to go with faith on this matter.
Everyone on this forum agrees that the transmission fluid needs to be changed.
Over at the Lexus forum, however, scares me a lot as nobody recommends performing a flush or fluid exchange but instead highly recommend drain/refill to play it safe.
However, Toyota wonāt perform drain/refill. Iād need to find an Indy shop for that, and I donāt trust any around here.
Hereās my opinion-
In transmissions, cleanliness is imperative to long life. Itās one of the few things I tend to least neglect 
The vast majority of car owners are not proactive in maintenance.
They wait until something happens before seeking any treatment.
Or, they procrastinate so long they finally decide I better get that fluid changed- it was due many years ago.
By then, there is a ton of debris in the system.
They get the āflushā and immediately have issues.
They blame the āflushā.
Itās expensive to replace the trans.
They go high and low proclaiming how the āflushā damaged their expensive transmission.
The risk averse crowd perpetuates the āsafer alternativeā to avoid the risk of āflushingā.
Something can go wrong after any service. There is always some risk.
Servicing transmission fluid as a regular maintenance keeps the contaminants at a very low level and therefore the risk is very low in performing a āflushā.
You are being proactive in maintenance.
If your transmission had 200k miles with no history of fluid changes, then I might be on the wagon against a āflushāā¦
Your transmission is a hydraulically operated device. There are no gears being moved around internally to āshiftā, there are clutches and bands being actuated hydraulically. The clutches and bands are thin pieces of steel with thin coatings of friction material not unlike brake pads, except the clutch and band coatings are typically less than 1/8th of an inch thick. Being so thin they cannot tolerate any slippage whatever without wearing out in very short order.
Because all of this machinery is operated hydraulically there are seals to maintain the requisite hydraulic pressure. What youāre really trying to do with a fluid change is extend the life of those seals. When any seal inside an automatic transmission ages it loses its flexibility. It gets hard and doesnāt seal well any more. When the seal is no longer working the hydraulic pressure that it should be containing is lost, and the clutch or band that the pressure is applying will slip. As already noted, clutches and bands cannot tolerate any slip without wearing out in very short order ( read that as SECONDS).
You change the fluid to replace the additives to the fluid that keep these seals soft and supple. You change the filter to get rid of the small amount of clutch and band friction material that inevitably does wear off in normal use. This small amount is not enough to affect normal operation for typically well over a hundred thousand miles. That material collects on the filter, and will block the filter if the filter is never changed. When the filter is blocked enough because of normal wear it will not be able to pass enough fluid to maintain pressure to keep all these parts from slipping. Once they slip they deposit more particles in the fluid which in turn blocks the filter even more. Thatās why it takes only a few seconds of slippage to destroy all the friction materials in a transmission.
Itās not magic, and itās not rocket science. Itās just good sense. Replace the fluid to keep the seals alive, replace the filter to keep fluid flow from getting restricted.
You, and this topic, are rapidly becoming tiresome.
Based on all that transmission gloom, Iām guessing you had a 1989 Chrysler New Yorker.
I totally agree. Iām tired of myself, too.
I trust this forum. The people on here have been helping me maintain my cars for 7 years.
My only problem is that mechanics have different opinions on this subject.
Iāve watched about 6 YouTube videos of mechanics contradicting other mechanics.
Either way, Iām going with what the mechanics on CarTalk recommend.
There are two veteran service writers at the Toyota dealership who appear exceptionally knowledgeable.
They are the ones I specifically go to, even when there are like 10 more writers available.
I remember when I had issues with my sunroof rubber seal and water was coming in, the service writer fixed it without scheduling me for an appointment. He also listens and drives my car when I tell him about the steering wheel issue. He also checks the fluid in the engine bay when I pull inside the service area.
I observe that his hands are always dirty, giving off the vibes heās a mechanic.
And he goes into deep details when heās describing my car issues.
But why would a mechanic be working as a service writer and not fixing cars ? Iām not there all day, so I donāt know if he stays in the service department for long.
My gut tells me that some service writers are mechanically knowledgeable.
Nope. My dad was a Buick dealershipās transmission expert. I knew every part of a Dynaflow transmission by the time I was 12. Overhauled ( with his supervision ) many Turbo 350 transmissions before I was 20.
You canāt possibly be as tired of yourself as most of us here are .
I just came off the phone with another Lexus dealer. This will be the 3rd Lexus dealership Iāve contacted looking for consistency, and this one just told me a few minutes ago that my transmission fluid needs to be changed every 40,000 miles. $750.
So here is the final result from stumbling upon this topic:?
Toyota recommends a fluid exchange every 60,000 miles.
Lexus 1 recommends fluid exchange every 95,000 miles.
Lexus 2 recommends never to service the transmission fluid.
Lexus 3 recommends to change the transmission fluid every 40,000 miles.
My car is going in tomorrow at Toyota.
Thanks everyone for your help on this topic.
Reminds me of an incident years ago. I used to work with a guy who was an excellent mechanic but had no people skills. One day someone wandered into the shop asking advice about something and remarked that he had asked 5 different mechanics and gotten 5 different answers. The mechanicās response was āwell then quit asking.ā