I've seen several people on the board who have had to put new transmissions in their '93 240s despite the lore that "the aw70 is bullet-proof, you can't kill it."

Mine is going south again and it's time to replace it. Is this a trend? Did something happen in the last years of the 240 to weaken the tranny or put more stress on it or...?

I posted a couple months ago about my transmission slipping horribly and shifting poorly. After a fluid change it got a little better. After a filter change it got even better. Now, it's going south again, and going fast. After the car has been sitting, I now have to get up to about 40mph before the tranny will shift out of 1st! Yes, that's pretty much the upper limit of the gear because I'm hitting rev-limiter at that point. If I give it just a trickle of gas and hold it there, after a minute or two at 20mph or so it will finally clunk into 2nd. Shifts to 3rd and 4th are delayed as well, but not nearly so bad.

My father is adamant that I not tear apart the car I aquired for the transmission yet so he paid for a BG transmission flush. I never would have done this, but hey, it's his money. The guy at the shop said it'd either fix the transmission or it'd destroy it. It did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Turns out, a homebrew flush and pan-drop are apparently as effective as a fancy expensive flush.

So now I think it's finally time to swap the tranny with the perfectly shifting one in my back yard.

Last year of the 240s. 130k miles. According to their reputation, it should have been near impossibe to destroy this transmission this quickly. But apparently I have. What went wrong in '93?