General question concerning transmission fluid change
 

Hi everyone.

I couldn't find the answer to my question by searching so here I am starting up a brand new thread :)

As the title implies my question is about changing the transmission fluid or rather when to do it.

My car is a 2005 Sebring Limited (sedan) 2.7 V6 with about 28K miles of road behind it.
It just struck me today that I should check when the transmission fluid is due for a change. I Googled it and came up with 30K miles (15K while driving in "stop-n-go" traffic).

The thing is that I mainly use it to get to work (a trip of about half a mile, I know I'm the laziest person there is :)) and therefor I am driving in "stop-n-go" traffic.

However when I check my service sheet it says that I shouldn't need to change the transmission fluid until the car has run 60K miles (or 59651,634455 to be exact :rolleyes:)

Could this really be? I'm no mechanic or anything, I just think this sounds unlikely.
So should I change the transmission fluid before the car reaches 60K miles or is that a reasonable distance to travel before changing it?

Another question I have is if it's difficult to change it yourself?
(I asked my "local" Chrysler shop for a price on a regular oil and filter change and was told it would cost around 310 USD, so I decided to do it myself) In my way of thinking it would be a tad trickier (more work) to change the transmission fluid and would therefor be more expensive.
That's why I'd rather do it myself if it's not to hard.
So is this something a hobbie-mechanic with little knowledge of cars could pull off or should I leave it to the pro's?

/Roger

u change it based off miles u have awhile to go then.

Transmission fluid is not like engine oil. It can go about 60,000 miles. Yours is getting to be due.
If you are undecided about doing it yourself, get a Haynes or Chilton's manual for your car and look in there for the procedure. A manual is a good thing to have even if you don't do much of your own work as it can help you discuss things intelligently with your mechanic. When you see what tools and work are involved you can decide whether to tackle the job or have it done.

Oil change shops can change the transmission fluid for less money than the dealer because they use a different procedure. The dealer will probably (or should for $310) remove the drain pan and change the filter along with the fluid. The oil change place will probably hook up a machine to the cooling lines and suck out the old fluid and replace it without dropping the pan and replacing the filter. For that, you'll pay under $100.

The $310 was for changing the engine oil and filter.
That's why I changed I myself....it's a pretty easy thing to do so I don't know why they should charge so much. I got away with about half of what they would charge me by doing it myself.

Anyway...back to the transmission.
I checked Haynes web site (both the American and Swedish which is my first language) but only found a book covering Sebring's 1995-2002 http://www.haynes.com/repairmanuals/chrysler/sebring EDIT: (OK, now I feel stupid....it says right there in the text beside the picture that it covers 1995 trough 2005 :o)
Could this book be of any use to me or are the differences between these years and my model to vast for it to be of any help?

Chilton on the other hand seems to have an enormous supply of books :)
So many in fact that I'm not quite sure which one I should get...any tip on which one could suit me?
By the way, I've scrolled through some Haynes manuals for other cars and I like them because many times they describe the thing you want to do as you would describe something to a child....this suits me perfect, not because I'm a child but because it's almost foolproof :p
Are Chilton's manuals as "user-friendly" as Hayne's?

They charged you $310 to change the engine oil and filter???!!!! That's 10 times what it should cost!!!! Good Lord!!! Honestly, that's robbery.

Chilton's and Haynes are pretty similar. Sometimes they use the same drawings.

The Sebrings from 2001 through and including 2006 are basically the same car, so a book covering some of those years will pretty much cover all of them.

That's what they said they would charge me.
The oil (Mobil 1 -Emission System Protection-) and filter when I bought it myself landed on something in the neighbourhood of $130-140, the rest of what they would charge me were work cost and some kind of enviromental fee.
Of course by doing it myself I didn't get my servicebook stamped but with those prices I can live without stamps in my servicebook.

I'll probably order the Hayne's manual but I'll definately check out Chilton's web site one more time before I make up my mind.

A good manual is really what I need since I like working on my car but have a huge gap in knowledge when it comes to these kind of things.