Joe,

If you search this board, you should find quite a bit on this question.

In general, regular changing/flushing of the fluid is a very good thing.

Specifically, however, on high-mileage cars which have never, or been poorly maintained, there is a signficant likelyhood that changing/flushing the fluid at this point will reveal problems which are temporarily being hidden from view.

Sometimes, relatively shortly after doing a change/flush, ON A CAR LIKE THIS, the transmission dies. THIS NOT BECAUSE OF THE CHANGE/FLUSH. The damage was already done and changing/flushing the fluid simply reveals a situation which was already there. Yeah, maybe if you didn't change/flush the fluid, you might have gotten 5-, or 10-thousand more miles, but now that you have gone and changed it, it died at 500 miles. Regardless, you were due for a transmission job anyway.

So, if you change/flush the fluid and you suffer immediate problems, you had already crossed that point where you were going to have problems anyway. If you change/flush the system and don't have any more problem, then you caught it in time.

Either way, it's a craps shoot and there is very little you can do to predict the outcome. The only predictor is the longer a transmission is mis-maintainted, the greater your chances of loosing this shoot.

Good luck.

Ken