black burnt trans fluid. How long is it going to last?

[matt167]

My mom has to borrow my Subaru tomorrow as she hit another deer with her car, and my grandparents needed theirs back. I decided to check the fluids and the trans fluid did not look quite right enough for me on the stick, so I decided to change the fluid ( did not touch filters ). I planned on doing the 3 time change when I did it. Anyway I just wanted to get some good fluid into it, and had 2 gallons of ATF so I figured it would be good enough.. Fluid came out black and burnt. The transmission shifted and ran fine, it wasn't malfunctioning or anything but now with a little over quarts of new fluid, it does have a bit crisper shift.. How long you think it might last?  The front diff is making noise and the trans will be replaced when the differential gets really noisy so it's not a big deal.

[idosubaru]

if it was working fine before then my guess is the front diff will be far more problematic than the trans fluid.

[Fairtax4me]

Black stuff in the ATF is friction material from the clutches.

Front diff noise may be cured by just changing the fluid as well.

[johnceggleston]

can't really say how long,

but what ever it was,

it is much longer now.

just make sure you have the right amount of fluid.

[matt167]

Yea, I think I checked the dipstick about 10 times to be sure. Both hot and after I let it sit and cool for a few mins.. When I dumped the old fluid back into the empty bottle, I found I put in almost exactly what came out.. That was after I had already checked the level 10 times.. Hopefully I can get 10k miles out of the whole transmission. If I can do that, i can postpone the trans swap until next spring