[Swanson.Jacob]

Hello, my 2013 Soul (!) Has 150,000 on the odometer, the car runs absolutely perfect with no problems, I've done every oil change at 3,000 miles and all other maintenance as well, I realized the other day I never changed the transmission fluid, the transmission works great!, no slips, no grinding, no hard shifts, it drives like butter!, I bought transmission fluid from Kia dealer and I want to do a drain and fill, I wanted opinions whether changing the fluid will cause problems.

 

[Flatsole]

Hello, my 2013 Soul (!) Has 150,000 on the odometer, the car runs absolutely perfect with no problems, I've done every oil change at 3,000 miles and all other maintenance as well, I realized the other day I never changed the transmission fluid, the transmission works great!, no slips, no grinding, no hard shifts, it drives like butter!, I bought transmission fluid from Kia dealer and I want to do a drain and fill, I wanted opinions whether changing the fluid will cause problems.

Nobody has a crystal ball and opinions are like assholes. But if it was mine I would do a drain & fill, especially since you already bought the fluid.

 

[rhysoul]

Doing a drain and fill is not likely to cause any problems but it won’t fix an already failing transmission. But yours sounds like it’s doing fine. You can use YouTube and watch some videos on how to do it. There are quite a few for the Soul with the 6 speed auto. A drain and fill will change just around half of the fluid.

 

[SoNic67]

I do drains and refills on all my transmissions. Just to replenish the broken-down additives...
The OE fluid is "lifetime" only in certain conditions. If you look at the conditions, in owner's manual, basically they are not met in 90% of cases, the rest is "heavy use".

 

[TosenR]

... A drain and fill will change just around half of the fluid.

Reminds me of on my previous car, an Accord, a drain & fill would change only about 25% of the automatic trans fluid.

I think the official procedure was for the mechanic to drain (netting 25%), fill, drive around making sure to shift through all the gears so that the new fluid circulated through the torque converter, then repeat 3 more times. After 4 drains & fills the trans fluid was considered to have been serviced.

Another strategy was instead of waiting to service the trans fluid every few years (or X number of miles), the DIYer could instead treat changing the trans fluid sort of like changing the oil just not as often. The idea was to annually drain & fill the transmission. Thus each and every year 25% of the fluid would be exchanged.

 

[rhysoul]

Reminds me of on my previous car, an Accord, a drain & fill would change only about 25% of the automatic trans fluid.

I think the official procedure was for the mechanic to drain (netting 25%), fill, drive around making sure to shift through all the gears so that the new fluid circulated through the torque converter, then repeat 3 more times. After 4 drains & fills the trans fluid was considered to have been serviced.

Another strategy was instead of waiting to service the trans fluid every few years (or X number of miles), the DIYer could instead treat changing the trans fluid sort of like changing the oil just not as often. The idea was to annually drain & fill the transmission. Thus each and every year 25% of the fluid would be exchanged.

That’s what I plan to do going forward with the old Soul. It’s last fluid service from a shop, where they hook it up to a machine and replace all the fluid in one shot was around 80k miles and now there’s about 135k or so on it. When it’s not freezing outside, like in Sping, I’ll do the first drain and fill and later in the year I’ll do a second. Then after that I’ll do a drain and fill every 25k miles or so.

 

[Flatsole]

I think that is a good plan, keep the fluid & add packs somewhat fresh just occasional drain & fills that replace 1/2 the fluid. Also ensures the level remains correct when following the procedure.

Near as I can tell there is no "normal" service interval but "severe" service is 60k miles on the ATF in my 2016.

 

[Onelowvoltage]

So is the general consensus to replace the transmission fluid regardless of the manufactures advice? I'm in Minnesota and have 130k on my 2016 2.0 Soul so I'm in "severe" service category. I've been debating have the dealer change it (they want to) but Kia doesn't say to do it in the manual.
From the sound of this thread I should have it done.

 

[rhysoul]

So is the general consensus to replace the transmission fluid regardless of the manufactures advice? I'm in Minnesota and have 130k on my 2016 2.0 Soul so I'm in "severe" service category. I've been debating have the dealer change it (they want to) but Kia doesn't say to do it in the manual.
From the sound of this thread I should have it done.

Yes.

There’s a service under “severe maintenance” Every 60,000 miles.

 

[Swanson.Jacob]

Just finished the drain and fill, everything went smooth!, for anyone wondering it's exactly 3.5 quarts of ATF, my only recommendation is to pour the ATF fluid slow into the funnel when filling, it burps the liquid everywhere if you fill it to high and fast

 

[Onelowvoltage]

Yes.

There’s a service under “severe maintenance” Every 60,000 miles.

thank you.
I didn't see that, for some reason.

 

[Joey90210]

I find it weird that the system can't accept fluid faster and blows it back or burps it regularly when trying to add the new fluid.

That was my experience too.