How Shall I Fix My Car’s Transmission? Repair or Replace or Rebuild?

Lesson #15. By [Automovill.com] powered by {DigiMusk.com}

Stories Of Life
Automovill
4 min readApr 2, 2018

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Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash

Your car’s transmission makes sure that the right amount of power goes into the wheels to drive at a certain speed. It is one of the most complex and crucial engine component.

When the transmission carries the engine power to the drive axels by using different gears, the engine starts rotating at different speeds.

When the transmission starts signaling issues, you fall in a fix between repair, replacement. While you choose to get it rectifies to a nearby workshop, it is recommended that you first figure out what’s exactly the issue.

Many of the times, you can get duped at the workshop, but if you know the basics, or ask your friends and relatives, or follow such blogs; you can safely become a smart owner of your car.

Let’s first see how would you that it’s your transmission causing the issue:

  • Transmission Slipping: You put on a certain gear but suddenly the gear is changed automatically for no apparent reason. You can also hear a pitching sound and can find difficulty in accelerating the car.
  • Rough Shifts: If you find that changing gears is not as smooth as it used to before. Sometimes you can hear a “clunk” when the car shift gears.
  • Delayed Engagement: When you change the gears, the car take time to adapt the speed change.
  • Fluid Leak: Generally, transmissions are sealed units and these shouldn’t leak any fluid. However, if you encounter any particular liquid on the driveway or garage floor, it’s time that you pay attention.

If you’ve figured out and reached out to the conclusion that the transmission is at fault, you end up deciding between options such as:

1. Repair

In general, if you get any part repaired, you’re replacing the minimum bare parts required to bring that particular part back to action. Here also, if you look out to repair the transmission, you would want the minimum parts to be replaced. However, the transmission structure is bit complex. If a single part is bad (which it usually is not the case), you have to pull all of the other parts in order to diagnose and repair.

So it doesn’t make sense to replace just the part which is bad while you have it all apart. You could replace the single part, at a cost difference of a couple hundred dollars, only to have it go bad again in the not too distant future when another part goes bad which wasn’t replaced.

2. Replace

Replacement of transmission is a heavy affair. It can cost you good amount of time and money both. Replacement involves dismantling the entire transmission and assembling new parts altogether. The hard-parts such as Drums, shafts, pumps, converters, the casing and gears cost a lot and replacement ends up a heavy budget commitment.

3. Rebuild

Rebuilding the transmission is comparatively cheaper than the replacement. Rebuilding involves removing the transmission, opening the case, inspecting and cleaning all the components and replacing the “soft” parts that are damaged or worn out. Some of these parts include seals, O-rings, bands, gaskets, valves, clutch components and filters.

Drums, shafts, pumps, converters, the casing and gears are referred to as the “hard parts” and rarely break because they are much more durable and rarely break. This process takes no more than 3 days in most cases.

In case, if you suffer the transmission issues, get it rebuild instead of getting it repaired or replaced. Also, do compare the prices involved.

Cost to Rebuild <<< Cost to Repair << Cost to Replacement

At the end, you need to be careful of all the repercussions that might arise due to your calculated decision. We, at Automovill, are there to guide you to the best as we’re putting more efforts in educating our customers to their best.

Read more about how we started and what’s our vision ahead:

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