The debate over drain-and-fill got me thinking about extending fluid life. Fluid doesn't really "age" linearly, because of heat and contamination but I wanted a way to (sort of) think about the effective age of the fluid.
Using an example with round numbers:
If you have a 10qt capacity and your vehicle has 20000 miles on it, then the fluid is 20000 miles "old". If you change half of that old fluid, then you could (sort of) think of the reservoir containing half old and half brand new fluid, averaging about 10000 miles of "effective age".
Then at 30000 miles (after another 10000 miles) you have 5 qts of fluid that had 30000 on it 5 qts that only had 10000 miles on it.
So, you might estimate that the fluid, at that 30000 mile point, is "effectively" 20000 miles "old" because thats the average of the two volumes' ages.
Now, again, thats not perfect but it might be an interesting way to think about fluid aging.
So, to that end, I constructed a little spreadsheet. I previously made a maintenance record spreadsheet that mimics the Service Records, and posted it here.
This new spreadsheet lets you manage your Drain-and-Fill maintenance protocol.
It lets you keep a goal and look ahead as to when a drain and fill is needed and how many drain and fills will achieve your goals.
A screenshot looks like this:
ATF Drain-And-Fill management spreadsheet
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fazool
- Posts: 746
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ATF Drain-And-Fill management spreadsheet
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atf.xls- (47.5 KiB) Downloaded 69 times
2007 S60 2.5T AWD (Daily Driver)
2001 S60 2.4T (Daughter's Car)
2003 S80 2.9 (Son's Car)
1995 850 2.4 (Daughter's Car - sold off)
2005 S40 2.4i (Bought new - since sold)
1986 740GLE 2.3(First Volvo - sold off)






