'01 and '02 xc70 owners only, when did your transmission die?

[grabby]

New to Volvo, actually new to owning a car. What does flushing mean?

[Astro14]

Your transmission holds about 8 quarts of fluid.

Draining the fluid via the drain plug nets just over three quarts because the fluid is trapped in the torque converter and passages into the transmission. So, you can't just drain it like engine oil. You get about 40% of the fluid.

But you can idle the engine and use the transmission pump to expel old fluid while adding new fluid. You will replace all the fluid using this method. It's pretty easy to do as DIY, and while the technical name is a cooler line fluid exchange, "flush" is the vernacular here.

Shops offer a transmission flush that uses external equipment to flush the fluid out, again, using the cooler line, but using an external pump.

Either way, a flush gets close to 100% of the fluid exchanged.

[GearheadNY.com]

I flush every 30,000 miles. Perhaps I'm overly cautious. For severe service, Volvo recommends every 52,500 miles.

Pick either one....It's not too late to start....

Just wanted to add to this that I did my most recent flush at 36,000 miles and the fluid was destroyed. I do mostly highway miles in the Northeast - Upstate NY/VT/MA/NH/CT/NJ - and it was a surprise to me. Honestly I'll be flushing mine every 20-25 now. Take this with a grain of salt because my car does have 194,000 miles on it now... and it appears to be the original transmission.

[JRL]

It will get filthy at 10K miles after a flush!

[GearheadNY.com]

It will get filthy at 10K miles after a flush!

LOL, too true! I added a filter in mine as well. I was getting hard shifts and it was shifting into gear slowly/surging at only 36k. Previously my trans was shifting like a new car, so that was a shock to me to see that looking so crappy at that mileage. I can only imagine what would happen if you followed the schedule.

[JRL]

The schedule says never!

[grainger12002]

do you have the part number for the orings needed when doing the pump\ converter via the return line ?

[grainger12002]

keep it......

[zru]

Bought an 01 xc70 in august with 136,000 miles Had to replace the rear wiring harness (did it myself and it was provided by the dealership) and it needs some trim bits replaced, an oil change and it took some coolant the other day but no trans issues so far. Ill be flushing the trans at the end of the school semester and i get back home in late december, after the 800 mile drive back to MA from MI.

[oblivionboyj]

New to the forum, this is my first post...

Mine died last month at 159k, and I have been looking for a replacement. Not necessarily an easy thing unless you want to drop the money on a remanufactured. I am narrowing it down now and finally have a few options. Hopefully I will have her back on the road in less than 2 weeks.

A lot of people, even a guy I knew who drives an XC the same year as mine, think I am crazy for wanting to fix it. But there are two reasons I am. The first is that if you have a car you like, that car will ALWAYS be more cost effective in the long run to repair rather than replace. If you try and save money on the repair by buying another car, assuming a repair is possible, you will ultimately end up spending more doing the repairs needed on the new car. And repairs will come up. And the second reason, related to the first, is that I just had most of the work done that would be points of failure besides the transmission (timing, suspension, etc- I am not the original owner and it had over 100k on it when I bought it). So my plan is a used transmission with fewer miles than I have, and service it annually. I figure with proper maintenance from this point out I can get another couple hundred thousand miles out of mine.

Thanks for having me, I can see myself spending a lot of time here