The 01 and 02 cars are being practically GIVEN away on Craigslist!
That said, I have never been afraid of a drain and fill. This not to be confused with a flush. There is a difference.
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 :)
It depends; where you are, what your abilities/resources/contacts are, remanufactured or new, etc.
Mine broke down on a job in Philadelphia. So I had to deal with it here. I knew a guy who knew a guy, and I am old friends with a guy who runs a tranny shop in Texas. So I had contacts and was able to get advice before I made decisions (and before I found this forum). I ended up with 2 prices;
$4300 for a remanufactured installed
$1800 for a used installed
I went with the later and should have my car back Monday.