My mom has a Subaru Outback that is about ~8 years old and lightly driven. She takes it to a local place for oil changes about once a year (she doesn’t drive enough to hit the recommended mileage between changes) and this time they accidentally drained the transmission instead of the oil.
They played it off like she got a great deal by getting a free transmission flush but I’m feeling a bit hesitant about how it was handled. Surely it’s not that easy to mix that up? Also since it’s a CVT, is there anything to watch out regarding that? (I’m admittedly cautious about CVTs after a terrible experience with a Nissan) Should she take it to the local Subaru dealership to get checked out, or did she really get a good deal with a free transmission flush? She would be hard-pressed to afford major repairs or a replacement vehicle.
I’d get a once-over by a dealer or a trusted mechanic, just in case. I’ve had too many bad experiences with quick-oil-change places, so I avoid them, not that it helps her now.
If - as is likely - there’s a dipstick for the engine oil and another for the transmission then a semi-competent mechanic can easily check whether both are full, and can look at the engine oil to verify that it’s new. If so, she should be good to go.
If it’s – say – a 2017 Subaru Outback, it may very well have a Continuously Variable Transmission.
I’d want to know exactly what they did and/or did not do. I’d then run it by the Subaru dealer and ask them if there’s any concerns.
Can you get the actual year, make, model, and transmission type for the car and add it to this thread?
ETA: I think I’m brain fogged. You did say it’s a CVT. I’d definitely run it by Subaru to make sure they’re not worried.
ETA2: Valvoline sells pretty much every kind of engine oil around. I doubt they’re trying to get you to become their customer:
Using the wrong type of transmission fluid for high-tech vehicles can result in irreversible damage. One should never mix regular manual or automatic transmission fluid with CVT fluid or vice versa. While an advanced car can run with the wrong transmission fluid, it will end in damage. The worst is that the user might not even notice anything has gone wrong until the issues have already progressed.
A good question to ask is when and how the shop noticed the transmission had been drained. Not that you’ll necessarily get a truthful answer.
Big difference between e.g.
“the car is on the rack, Bob the Goofball pulled the drain plug then noticed the fluid coming out was red. So we waited until it stopped draining, then installed the plug and added the recommended amount of the recomended fluid”
Versus
We finished the job, took it for a test drive and it made horrible noises and would not shift out of first gear. So we drove it back to the shop, then noticed the transmission was empty and the drain plug was missing.
The best things to do is have an Subaru mechanic do a flush. Or at least, have them look at the fluid and to see if it seems like the right kind. Does the receipt mention the type of fluid? It’s there any documentation about what happened? It might be worth notifying the corporate office about what happened and keep a copy. If the transmission fails because of this, she’d likely have a case against them.
It is a 2017 Outback (good guess at the beginning of your post ) and it definitely does have a CVT.
This is also part of what concerns me, but I’m not sure my mom remembered or recited what happened correctly. When she told me, she said the guy talked about how clean the oil looked, he couldn’t believe it was a year old, etc. etc. And then came back to her and said they’d accidentally drained the transmission instead and was now doing the oil change. But then she repeated herself about how he said the oil was clean… So a couple of potential issues - did the guy not visually see a difference between motor oil and transmission fluid? Or is it more like your first scenario and my mom has just bungled the telling of it?
I’ve texted her asking about the receipt to see if there’s any info on there. And I’m pretty sure it’s a local place, so no corporate to escalate to if there is a problem…
She was oddly resistant yesterday when I mentioned taking it to the dealership to get checked out. I can’t tell if she just doesn’t want to deal with the hassle or what, but the responses make me feel better about pushing back on this a little more.
We had a quckie oil change place do this to our 2012 Subaru Forester. Transmission plug is back a bit from the engine oil plug and somehow the oil change jockey pulled the wrong one. I still don’t know how you can do that, but he at least recognized it was red fluid. They told me about the mistake and filled it correctly.
That was the last time I let someone else change the oil. I installed a small ball valve on the engine oil drain and can now change the oil and filter with no tools and very little effort. Subaru puts the oil filter up top and it is really easy to change. Of course, with it being the standard oil burning boxer engine, do I really need to change or just top off?
A transmission drain and fill shouldn’t harm the transmission assuming they used the correct fluid. I would be worried on an 8 year old car if they did a full flush to clean out all of the contaminants. That can ruin an old rarely-serviced transmission.
Depends on the design of the engine / transmission.
On a 1960-1970s US car it’s easy to tell which is which; they’re about 4 feet apart, wide out in the open, and the engine and trans are two very differently shaped components that look very unrelated and have a clear demarcation where one connects to the other. As between Ford, GM, or Chrysler, they all look about alike. Anyone who’s ever worked on any of them will be able to find the landmarks on any other of them almost without thinking.
Conversely, on modern transverse 4-bangers with front or all wheel drive the engine & trans are damn near one single big module. With two drain plugs that might well be 4 inches apart and positioned where you can’t easily get your eyes and your wrenches on them.
Mistakes are vastly more likely on that latter sort of installation. Plus of course the non-training given by modern corporations and the “I don’t care about my McJob” attitude of modern workers.
Let me correct myself, at that point the transmission is already damaged but strangely the sludge and debris that builds up hides that fact. Once you clean all of that out, the transmission starts to fail. A mechanic can explain it better than I can.
Over time, crud will build up in nooks and crannies. Over a long time, there can be a lot of crud. A flush and fill can dislodge the crud and it could clog somewhere else. New fluid may also have detergents which break down the crud, but the pieces may still be somewhat large. The same can happen with oil. Regular fluid changes will keep the system relatively clean and won’t allow the crud to build up to the point that it could be a problem.
) and it definitely does have a CVT.