Posts Tagged ‘Manual Transmissions’

Transmission Repair And What You Have To Know

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Transmission Repair Technicians are also required to diagnose transmission problems and understand customer relations. An associate’s degree in Automotive Technology can help to in[crease|advance} career opportunities. Tranny repair specialists diagnose and repair automotive transmissions. They work on cars, farm machinery and heavy equipment. Transmission repair can go up and over $2000 for maintenance. Your car obviously cannot drive if it can not change gears, so if this problem creeps up on you, you must be prepared to repair.

Transmission repairs can prove to be costly and therefore proper maintenance can help you to stay out of such problems. A burnt smell can also be a sign of faulty tranny.

Automatic transmissions use a series of hydraulically controlled clutches to change the ratio produced by the internal planetary gears. A planetary gearset is a group of three types of rotating gears that are all encased in a common housing. Auto repair shops are about as much fun as going to the dentist. However, many repair shops today are taking the pain out of the process. Automatic transmissions are complicated, ever-evolving systems that are normally beyond the scope of the lay person to repair. The specialized tools required to perform most service operations are rather expensive and not commonly available in the average toolbox.

Manual transmission problems can arise from low tranny fluid just like automatics, but they have other problems too. Since manual transmissions have so many moving parts inside the car, subject to the driver’s control, these parts get more and different types of wear than an automatic transmission system. Manual tranny fluids usually require less frequent changing. A vehicle with an automatic transmission has a dipstick located in the engine compartment under the bonnet/hood. Manual tranny cars also have a gear shift that guides changes in the transmission depending on the terrain that the car is traveling over. In automatic transmission cars, this gear system is automated.

Manual tranny’s were far more fuel efficient, and were standard on small foreign imports, which became popular during the efficiency-aware ’70s. But as prices settled and automatic transmissions became more fuel-efficient and increasingly advanced, they rose in again in popularity through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Tranny’s can leak from nearly 20 different external seals- some are very simple to fix, while others require more involved service procedures. In any case, the idea is to have the vehicle looked at right away by a qualified transmission repair shop because, much like an engine that gets low on oil, a tranny that is low on fluid can fail completely in very short time.