Mine has exceeded 220 on days where it's very hot - 100°+ and towing my travel trailer, never while wheeling. I do have the V8 cooler but it still happens which concerns me. Wondering if I should add a larger cooler or something to keep it cooler.
Don't quote me on the temp. I heard that somewhere. I was hoping blackworks would chime in and let us know what the actual upper range is. Has your A/T Temp light ever come on? If not, then you are not hitting the upper range and I wouldn't worry.
As for the metal bits. This is my understanding of how this works. Our transmissions do not have a filter, instead they have a pick up screen the prevents anything of any worry from moving into the moving parts. As for the natural wear of the gearing, according to friend of mine, this was anticipated and for the expected life of the vehicle that is run under normal operating conditions and not abused, this particulate matter should never exceed safe operating range.
It sounded like, and this makes sense, that those of us on here have a tendency to "overthink" and "overworry". If you think about how many older cars, with older A/T trans that were run into the ground by people who never cared, original fluid, and it made it well into the 200k mile rage (the upper percentile for longevity) then it makes sense.
I am not arguing that doing 0 maintenance will allow you to get to 500k miles on the trans, not at all, but that the point is for the 99th percentile that has a vehicle "age out", as in retire due to some other issue it will be before the fluid reaches max achievable end of life.
If you consider the average life span of a car is around 10 years and around 150 - 200k miles. Cars naturally die out due to world occurances. Wrecks, crashes, they get too old and stuff breaks (A/C, Windows) and are sold off because of it. Engine goes, the engine is a far more hostile working environment.
I won't argue DON'T change. I did and I feel glad for it. I am merely addressing the concept of "lifetime" fluid and have come to the conclusion that it probably is. Consider this, your typical car owner does't care and drives it till it dies. How many of these trans have you heard of dieing? Not me. They appear to be very strong, this suggests that they are built around a concept of outlive the rest of the car. Your average driver will tired of the dead suspension, leaking sunroof, banged up seats, before the trans goes.
Just my thought.
