I took my car into the Honda dealership about 6,000 miles ago for a Tranny fluid change and Differential fluid change. Dropped the car off and came back 2 hours later, it was done. So for the last week I've had a nasty odor coming from under the car and the tranny was not smooth at all. Took the car into Honda to explain the problem. Got a call 2 hours later. Clutch cylinder was leaking. Fixed under extended warranty, no problem. The service adviser says that the Tranny had differential fluid and the differential had tranny fluid. The tech had put the wrong fluids in! Wow, I was dumb founded to say the least. Just had to vent. I got the service managers info and I'm going to call him and explain to him the situation.

 

ummmmm . . . don't suppose I need to tell you to document the hell out of this one, right? I doubt they are going to pop for a new diff and tranny right now, but if something fails in the future I would have a ton of paperwork ready to bring to the table. Whole thing sounds fishy to me though. If they crawled under and saw the clutch master or slave was leaking, fine, replace it. What were they playing around with diff and tranny fluid analysis for? They are all closed seperate systems. Unless they were checking tranny fluid as a possible cause and noticed something not right there. Regardless, 6000 miles is long enough on the wrong fluids to do some damage I would think. Good luck.

 

:i agree:

Make sure you get this documented in as many places as possible. Make them give you papework showing their error. The reason being is that the improper fluid, especially in the rear end of our car, can be detrimental. There are a lot of threads showing where Honda dealers using the wrong diff fluid in our rear end has caused major problems. Apparantly some Honda dealers commonly used the CRV diff fluid in the s2k and thought it was interchangeable. Shortly down the road the rear ends usually had big problems.

I imagine Honda Transmission Fluid is far below the viscosity needed for the diff. Make sure thsi is documented in case you end up with problems. I also agree with Clag (the above posters) point about why they even found this to begin with? How did they even tell? Did they notice the tranny smelled like sulfur or something? I don't know, but I would not return to this dealer's service department in the future.

We are not trying to make you freak out over anything, just making sure you cover yourself in case you have any problems in the future.

 

^^^^Document, document, document!!!^^^^

Act as nice as possible to make sure they cooperate with you.

 

ouch is what your diff has been saying for the past 6k miles!

I suspect that you will find some pretty nasty stuff come out of there and on the drain bolt when you drain it

they probably already took care of that though and made the shavings.chunks "disappear" leaving you with little proof for damage to your diff and tranny.

get some documentation, to tell you the truth... i'm suprised your diff has lasted 6k with tranny fluid in there

 

I bet the diff is super clean, and the tranny is gunk-ed up to high heaven...

I would drain/refill the tranny one more time after you put some miles on it.

 

I got the fluids changed today to the proper areas. Funny thing is, the car drove like normal. I wouldn't have noticed anything different if it weren't for the nasty smell from the tranny. Maybe I'm just lucky. I have all documents to prove I had the service done but I don't see myself winning an argument for them not knowing what they did wrong.

 

now you can drive like a rape date most of the time and if either fail, you got covered!! just document baby, and you will be golden.

 

Running gear oil in the trans wont hurt it, just make it shift harder in colder weather. The Trans fluid in the rear probably wont hut much unless you beat the crap out of it all the time.

 

Yeah, the tranny was stiff as hell. But other than that it runs like a champ.