AAMCO Unnecessary Repairs Infiltrated Clearwater Florida

I've read some of the complaints here and thought, "I knew that was coming , maybe I should have told somebody". I know these things because I involved myself with Aamco, but I didn't actually work there. I am entering the realm of speculation, as opposed to the strictly factual that was in my first report.

In general Aamco works like this: They don't sell repairs, they sell overhauls. They know the price of the overhaul for any particular transmission before you get there, and the transmission you are going to drive away with is usually sitting on a shelf waiting for you. The prices are high enough to cover their costs and make a fair profit for the worst possible case. That price includes "hard parts". Everyone is charged the standard price for the worst possible case. A torque converter is required with every overhaul, therefore, it must be included in the estimate. Adding it on later is like ordering a chocolate malted and finding out they want you to sign an additional consent for extra fees to include milk when they make it. Still, get it in writing! I am increduloius at the number of complaints I see about Aamco raising the price later, for what was chaged for in the first place.

In the course of working on transmissions for years, some of the workers get to be pretty brilliant about this kind of work. They still don't know everything, and the constantly changing car designs keep them learning, constantly. Sometimes, you get to be the guinea pig by presenting a transmission that this particular mechanic hasn't previously worked on. They get into trouble by not knowing everything about every transmission, immediately, and not being brilliant enough to back away from selling you an overhaul when some other problem is causing the transmission to act oddly.

The first "standard" act is to look at the tranny fluid and pronounce it "burnt". Aamco pretends this means you need an overhaul. It doesn't. If you go to a junk yard and check the transmission fruid of the wrecked cars, you will find that 99% of them died from external causes while driving around with "burnt" transmission fluid. Personally, I buy a fluid change kit with gasket and filter, install one on every car I acquire, and braze a drain plug into the pan. After that I drain the 3 or 4 quarts that will come out, every time I change the engine oil, That results in about a 78% tranny fluid change every year. That isn't perfect, but it is ever so much better than no fluid changes at all, for 100,000 miles. The slow replacement of the tranny fluid keeps it from thickening and becoming degraded with age. That keeps several problems at bay.

The second standard act is to tell you that the transmission has been damaged and driving it will hurt it more. They don't tell you they do a complete overhaul and charge the same price, no matter what condition it is in. If you resist, they start with the scare tactics. "I can't guarantee you'll get home if you don't buy an overhaul". They can't guarantee you'll get home if you DO buy an overhaul! That is because the most likely time for a valve to get stuck on a piece of dirt is right after they disturb everything by taking it apart.

Torque converters contain several critical parts and Aamco does not cut them open and rebuild them. They buy rebuilt torque converters. Torque converters contain a lot of tranny fluid, and it is very difficult to rinse every nook and cranny for particles that will cause problems later. That is the best reason to replace the torque converter, and why it is included with any overhaul. It's like paying a dollar each for o-rings when assembling a car air conditioner. Outrageously over priced, but the trouble they can cause is well worth the insurance of buying them. Torque converters also contain bearings, clutches, and other stuff that wears out or gets stuck. You can't look inside them and fumble around with the innards, so replacing them is a form of insurance.

Most transmissions die from clutch wear. The clutches just fade away until they start slipping. At that point, the damage is done. Sometimes the face material from the clutches gets in the valve body and the transmission stops shifting correctly. Opening a transmission to replace a couple of $20 clutches is the perfect time to throw in a $100 "rebuild kit" and no one will guarantee a repair without replacing the rubber parts and paper gaskets. Disturbing them during a repair pretty much guarantees they will start leaking. The price of the kit is nothing compared to the labor. Tearing a tranny apart twice because you were too cheap to buy the overhaul kit is the rule, not the exception.

While we're at it, bushings. Any bushing that shows any tiny spot where the white metal is gone, should be replaced. There are spacers between the clutches. They look a lot like washers. They are responsible for the sum of the heights of all the parts to be the right length to fill the external case properly. Sometimes you need a set of spacers to get the final clearance from the front cover right.

Sometimes a transmission breaks something. That's called a "hard part". Most of the hard parts come from junk yard tranny's. They are really quite expensive. The worst transmission I ever did required $650 worth of parts. I'd still make a nice profit if I was charging $2,000 for that overhaul. The profit from most transmissions that only require a gasket set and a couple of clutches? That's what pays for lobster dinners and champagne!

If you go to Aamco, you're going to buy an overhaul or have it towed home with a box of parts in the trunk, after paying hundreds to have your transmission disassembled. They even tried that on me when I brought 2 recently overhauled transmissions in for preventative maintenance. I sincerely suggest you check around for somebody else to do all of your tranny work. Some mechanics are honest and charge way less than the prices needed to support all that A-A (beep beep) M-C-O advertising.

I know you're over a barrel when the tranny dies, but you have to adjust to that fact quickly. Your horse has a broken leg. If you don't own a spare car, you have to become willing to accept the fact that you are going to hire taxi cabs for a while, rent a car, leech off your friends, take busses, ride a bicycle, limit your traveling severely, or most of the above. You have to consider what your car is worth compared to thousands for a transmission. Could you sell it with a known bad tranny and lose less than Aamco charges? Can you spend a week finding an honest mechanic and another week to get it repaired? Can you install a junk yard transmission?

I'm a very rare person. I went to school and learned to overhaul my own transmissions.

If you have the money for an Aamco overhaul, and an expensive car, go for it. Aamco does proper work 99% of the time. Just know what you're in for. It's always a complete overhaul and it's always expensive.