Bright rear lights 1520Well my suggestion being that it's (the gearbox) probably doing an awful lot more of 1st to neutral to 1st again, over the lifetime of the box by somebody who habitually moves out...
I've never got that using park when waiting on the road, during driving thing - but then I can recall having this discussion previously ;-)
The one thing I would add, is that my auto is around the 200k mark, with no slipping, bumping or grinding or clangs, or anything funny like that. The ATF shows no contamination or blackening, neither.
The one car I've personally encountered (test driven) that has shown notable blackness with the ATF, and actually exhibited gearbox issues, was a Lexus LS400, with quite reasonable miles on (80 odd k, as I recall). It was in pristine condition, and the only thing that put me off with the car, was blackening of the ATF, and slippage in 1st. No other gears slipped, nor flared.
Around that time, I test drove countless other LS400s of similar vintage and miles, and this was the only one that showed the symptoms, but the only one that looked to have been treated so respectfully - and according to the salesman, was owned by somebody he knew (company director, in his late 50s). If I was to speculate on why the autobox had the issues it did, perhaps it was that slightly old-fashioned, move out of drive to P (probably), or neutral, that maybe caused it.
Of course, my supposition may be just that - and be an overly buttumptive inference, but I can't help but think habitually changing from D to P or N when stopped paused on the road, may not be the best thing for long-term longevity for an autobox.
Clearly, though, some owners aren't really that concerned about that, and once a car has got to 100k, or maybe even 150k miles, they consider it expendable, but I'm personally hoping for as many miles as I can get. Ideally at least another 100k (so totalling around 300k).
