400 Commonwealth Drive, Warrendale, PA 15096-0001 U.S.A. Tel: (724) 776-4841 Fax: (724) 776-0790 Web: www.sae.org SAE TECHNICAL PAPER SERIES 2006-01-3242 General Motors DEXRON®-VI Global Service-Fill Specification Roy Fewkes, Brent Calcut and Angela Willis General Motors Corp. Powertrain & Fluid Systems Conference & Exhibition Toronto, Canada October 16-19, 2006Downloaded from SAE International by Imperial College London, Friday, August 10, 2018The Engineering Meetings Board has approved this paper for publication. It has successfully completed SAE's peer review process under th e supervision of the session organi zer. This process requires a minimum of three (3) reviews by industry experts. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of SAE. For permission and licensing requests contact: SAE Permissions 400 Commonwealth DriveWarrendale, PA 15096-0001-USAEmail: [email protected]: 724-772-4028 Fax: 724-776-3036 For multiple print copies contact: SAE Customer Service Tel: 877-606-7323 (inside USA and Canada)Tel: 724-776-4970 (outside USA)Fax: 724-776-0790Email: [email protected] ISSN 0148-7191 Copyright © 2006 SAE International Positions and opinions advanced in this paper are those of the author(s ) and not necessarily those of SAE. The author is solely responsible for the content of th e paper. A process is available by which discussions will be printed with the pap er if it is publishe d in SAE Transactions. Persons wishing to submit papers to be considered for presentation or publicat ion by SAE should send the manuscript or a 300 word abstract to Secretary, Engineering Meetings Board, SAE. Printed in USADownloaded from SAE International by Imperial College London, Friday, August 10, 2018ABSTRACT During early 2005 General Motors released a newly developed ATF for the factory fill of all GM Powertrain stepped gear automatic transmissions. The new fluid provided significantly improved performance in terms of friction durability, viscosity stability, aeration and foam control and oxidation resistance. In addition, the fluid has the potential to enable improved fuel economy and extended drain intervals. Since the performance of the new fluid far exceeded that of the DEXRON ®-III service fill fluids available at the time it became necessary to upgrade the DEXRON ® service fill specification in order to ensure that similar fluids were available in the market for service and repair situations. This latest upgrade to the service fill specification is designated DEXRON ®-VI [1]. INTRODUCTION Since General Motors introduced the first ATF service fill specification in 1949 it has been periodically necessary to upgrade the specification. This upgrading process ensures that available service fill fluids are of an appropriate quality for use in transmissions that have been designed around the factory fill fluid performance. The 1949 specification was designated ‘Type A’ and since that time there have been eight upgrades including the one to which this paper refers. The 1967 upgrade was the first to bear the DEXRON ® registered trademark of General Motors [2]. The various iterations of the DEXRON ® specification have always provided a performance window which allowed variance in the performance of approved fluids [3]. In the case of DEXRON ®-VI, the specification is written very tightly around the performance of the factory fill fluid, significantly reducing the allowed variation and thus providing consumers with a greater level of confidence in the fluids that they purchase under the DEXRON ® trademark. Figure 1 is a timeline of the upgrades to the DEXRON ® specification including the associated fluid drain intervals. In addition to the upgrades listed, there were two revisions made to the DEXRON ®-III speci