2011 Accord V6 63K miles auto transmission: Dealer says change every 30K miles. Some on-line info states that Honda recommends fluid change at 120K miles under normal driving conditions.

The dealer changed it at 30K miles and wants to change it again? Rip-off?

Do I wait for the Maintenance Reminder notice or just wait until 120K miles?

 

The owners manual should have a list of things that might put you into the "severe driving conditions" category. See if any of those apply to you. Some of those things are pretty normal for some people.

 

2011 vehicle. 63K in 11 yrs = 6K/yr = 500/mo = <20 miles/day

This suggests a lot of short distance trips, in town or in city.
Short trips are harder on the drive train, rule of thumb.

 

Thanks for the comments.

 

I also think that the maintenance intervals (for everything, not just ATF) will say xx miles or nn months, WHICHEVER COMES FIRST.
That didn't occur to me when I answered. Still, maybe the car was barely driven for a few years, but now you're driving 15k miles a year. Any combination of things are possible.

From having owned a few Hondas (in the family), I know that the maintenance-minder calculated the elapsed time, the number of short trips, the number of engine-starts, the amount of time the engine is warming up, & all kinds of stuff like that.

After getting several oil samples analyzed from Hondas in the family, I'm tempted to trust the maintenance minder for engine-oil changes. I'm not so sure for ATF changes, because our cars had manual transmissions. Some of Honda's automatic transmissions have a reputation for being fragile. Since a new transmission costs a lot more than an ATF change, I'd probably lean towards the side of changing ATF more frequently.