My wife drives a 1996 Toyota RAV4 with 145,000 miles on it, and like my wife's car, I too am getting up in miles and occasionally opt to go to Jiffy Lube.

The last two times I went, I asked for the oil and transmission fluid to be changed but they told me both times that the car has too many miles on it and that they wouldn't touch the tranny as changing the fluid could makes things worse. Something about making things "too slippery" and causing leaks and the best thing they could recommend is just making sure the fluid level is up.

Does this make sense to anybody? Care to explain it to somebody who doesn't understand?

 

Make it too slippery?

Sounds like they didn't want to do it and made up excuses. Maybe they didn't have the right transmission fluid. Just came off a '97 Odyssey at 225K. Changed the transmission fluid according to the manual (every 30K I believe). It's still going strong for the liquor store delivery guy I sold it to.

Take it to a certified mechanic and not a grease monkey and see what he says.

 

When was the last time you had your transmission fluid changed?

I would go back to the dealership & ask them for their opinions. In this case I would recommend you to go back to the dealership & get them to use OEM tranny fluid to do a few drain & fill on the transmission, probably do that whenever u go in for your next engine oil change. Keep doing that for at least 4-5 times then see what happen. I probably wouldn't do a real transmission flush until after I do a few drain & fill. Anyway see what the techs & advisors says at the dealer.

It's ok to do engine oil change but u gotta be careful with hot oil flush or other engine flushes coz the gums might clog up oil passages etc. Some lube place(not sure if that was Jiffy Lube)got into trouble before coz they were pushing some fluid flushes that were not necessary.