Hey guys ,

Just recently bought an S60 2007 2.5 turbo with 119,000 miles on it. I haven't checked yet but I was wondering let's assume it's brown/burnt should I flush? It's been a little bit rough in traffic when the car warms up shifting up-and-down. Otherwise it's pretty great on the highway. I've heard that if the tranny fluid wasn't changed religiously then it's not a good idea to change it but I wanted to reach out to the forums and see what you guys thought.

Also if you could give me any suggestions about maintenance around this time if you have experience with this particular year and model I would appreciate it.

Thanks a lot in advance!

 

I've heard the same debate about whether or not you should flush the transmission if it's never been serviced by the previous owners. If you have any skepticism then I would avoid it and just do a few simple drain and fills to replace the old dirty fluid. In my experience though, I've never had transmission issues as a result of doing a full transmission flush but these weren't Volvo's so I'm not too certain how they might react.

Here is a link to the maintenance schedule:
ALL 2007 VOLVO MODELS
Since these motors have a timing belt, be sure that you have records of it being replaced at the proper interval(s). If not and you have zero documentation, I would change it immediately.

 

+1 on the drain/fill routine unless you know the service history of the trans. Do it once, drive for a week, repeat 2 more X. Each drain/fill only changes about 40% of the fluid and of course subsequent drain/fills increase the % to where the 3rd gives about 75% new fluid and the 4th would give approaching 90%. The fresh additives will be working on the varnish build up inside and will gradually dissolve it. That varnish makes shift solenoids, valves, etc. stick and give a slightly delayed response. Flushing is too much of a shock on a system that has probably been ignored far too long. If you can verify that the trans was serviced every 30K or so then you could get more aggressive by speeding up the process by driving for a few minutes between each drain/fill making sure to shift through all gears in the process.

 

I recently took my '06 S60 with 135,000 to a Volvo dealer for a flush. They strongly recommended that I not do a flush, to the point that I would have had to sign a waiver in order for them to do it. I explained that I have had it flushed at 45K and again at 90K but they still did not recommend it.

 

I am not a fan of "flushing" a transmission. As the other senior member above says, change it twice. On each drain/fill you will get about 4 quarts. If you change it twice you have changed the approximate capacity of the transmission. Changing the fluid will not hurt anything and only helps with fresh fluid.

However, the rough shifting will not be solved with transmission fluid changes. You can run an oil tanker's volume of fluid through that thing and it will still shift rough. The issue that you have is that the three linear solenoids need changing.