I have been told several times here in the past that I should NOT change my tranny fluid because I do not know whether I have ever flushed it in the past. This has been the advice I have received here on several occasions.

Yet when I hit the beloved FAQ that I read like a novel I only see advice to change it regardless.

1990 744 B230F AW70 LH 2.4

Purchased in 1999 from auction-haunting micro dealership. Car had one previous owner in Texas. Condition was not good when we bought it. Milage at that time was about 115,000, currently about 275,000.

I have been a musician all my life and never have a lot of money. My brick got oil changes at a good place that never broke or damaged anything on the car. I averaged about 6,000 miles between changes. Used Castrol GTX 10W30. Had several services done to it over the years, some of them several times.

And honestly, I cannot remember having a tranny flush. I have personally never done this.

I am much older now and am finally doing all my own work. I have the IPD tranny hose for the line to the radiator and would like to flush this system. It smells burnt and is black. I want to also drop the pan and clean the filter as that has probably never been done. I am aware that Volvo no longer recommends this as a necessary thing, but I still would like to clean this heap out and fill it with fresh stuff.

Again, I am getting conflicting advice from this board and always have on this topic. The negative has been strong enough that I have purposely avoided a tranny flush when I did have the time and money.

Now, after re-reading the FAQ on this topic I feel I may have been mislead by the emotions of others when the FAQ talks some solid sense.

Should I or should I not flush this car's AW70?

Can anyone please give me a more solid answer than what I have had in the past? Is this a wive's tale of not? I am sure that lots of metal particulate will be washed away when I do this. But will it really cause my transmission to die on me? The thing shifts slow and sort of hard. I would like to fix that...

[Also, is there a good writeup on swapping in a manual? I know about all the parts. I know that the pedal install is not easy. I still much prefer manual transmissions over autos by far. I own four manuals and this single auto that shifts poorly.]

Thank you for your time and consideration regarding this debatable topic.
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Mama always told me to eschew obfuscation...