Troubles with transmission

deepdiver1950 · July 22, 2004

When I took delivery of this truck the first thing that I did was check the fuids. I immediately noticed that the transmission fluid was clear. This didn't bother me because I work in a machine shop & have done hydraulic repairs on industrial oilfield equipment, and I know that there is such a thing as clear hydraulic fluid, I have seen it before,but never in a vehicle.

But then I started having trouble with the trans. Sometimes when I would take off from a dead stop the truck seemed like it didn't want to go, and then in the middle of the intersection it would downshift violiently. I am convienced that it was not shifting into 1st. gear and infact was trying to take off in second. It did this 8 or 10 times and I brought it to the dealer 3 times. The dealer always said that they could not duplicate the problem. After the third time for some reason I decided to check the trans. fluid and now it is red. At some point the dealer changed the clear fluid and replaced it with regular red tramsmission fluid. Since then I discovered that I have a drain plug on the trans. and have run about 20 quarts of fluid through it. I drain out a gallon and replace it with 4 quarts. The trans is shifting much better but there is no way to tell if any damage was done or if I will have problems in the future.

My question is this. Have any of you ever heard of GM putting clear hydraulic fluid in their trucks & secondly has any of you ever had the same type of problem with your truck? Thanks for the input.

prideclaw · July 24, 2004

If any manufacturer (GM or whoever) developed a clear trannie fluid of any sort recently, I sure wasn't told. I'm going out on a limb here and say that someone at the factory screwed up.