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 2007-01-3987 Comparison of OEM Au tomatic Transmission Fluids in Industry Standard Tests Roy Fewkes and Angela Willis General Motors Corp. Powertrain & Fluid Systems Conference & Exhibition Rosemont, Illinois October 29-November 1, 2007Downloaded from SAE International by Lulea Technical University, Friday, September 14, 2018The Engineering Meetings Board has approved this paper for publication. It has successfully completed SAE's peer review process under the supervision of the session organizer. 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 © 2007 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 the paper. A process is available by which discussions will be printed with the paper if it is published in SAE Transactions. Persons wishing to submit papers to be considered for presentation or publication by SAE should send the manuscript or a 300 word abstract to Secretary, Engineering Meetings Board, SAE. Printed in USADownloaded from SAE International by Lulea Technical University, Friday, September 14, 20182007-01-3987 Comparison of OEM Automatic Transmission Fluids in Industry Standard Tests Roy Fewkes and Angela Willis General Motors Corp. Copyright © 2007 SAE International ABSTRACT As a result of raised awareness regarding the proliferation of individual OEM recommended ATFs, and discussion in various forums regarding the possibility of ‘universal’ service fill fluids, it was decided to study how divergent individual OEM requirements actually are by comparing the fluids performance in industry standard tests. A bench-mark study was carried out to compare the performance of various OEM automatic transmission fluids in selected industry standard tests. All of the fluids evaluated in the study are used by certain OEMs for both factory and service fill. The areas evaluated included friction durability, oxidation resistance, viscosity stability, aeration and foam control. The results of this study are discussed in this paper. Based on the results, one can conclude that each ATF is uniquely formulated to specific OEM requirements. In addition, the results show that a customer should not deviate from the automatic transmission fluid specified in the vehicle's owners manual. INTRODUCTION In recent years, a number of factors, including changes in automatic transmission design, materials, and controls systems, have led many OEMs to implement revisions to their ATF specifications. The main ATF performance areas affected by these revisions are: • Viscometrics and related properties • Thermal and oxidative stability • Anti-wear performance • Friction characteristic and durability • Aeration and Foam performance A range of commercially available automatic transmission fluids were tested in order to compare their performance in terms of the above referenced properties. The tests that were selected for this evaluation are all currently used in OEM specifications. However, they are not necessarily used in each specification represented by the individual OEM fluids that are a part of this evalu