The Nissan Path

Hello all,
First of all I want to thank you all for creating such a very informative site for the Nissan Pathfinder owners or enthusiast.The forums members are awesome.

Now I went to the dealer to purchase Matic J 6 quarts but he gave me Matic S for the price of matic j price. He hook me up with 8.88 a bottle. So now I have everything need to do the external tranny bypass.

My friend owns a all in one shop, where they do work on everything includinhg high end vehicles such as race cars,motorcycles and seen Tractor trailors in his place from time to to time.

Anyway installed the external tranny cooler, then did a tranny drain and filled. Then truck is running way more smoother than it was prior to all that I did.
I had took my Path to jiffy lube to do there full tranny fluid extraction service. They said they had the 4matic trans fluid. But I notice a difference right away. The tranny wasn't going through the gears as smoothly and it seems stressed.

But once I did the trans drain and fill with matic S everything is nice and smooth. I see a big difference

My last point is now I feel more confident that my trans will not blow. So for you on here who are trouble making the decision to do. I would its inexpensive mod that will safe you up the 8k in yhe long run.

There's not really a need to add an external cooler on North American models as they come with an external cooler from the factory and the transmissions seem to be running plenty cool with the factory cooler. Nissan Type "S" replaced Type "J." Unless you like spending twice as much for tranny fluid, you can use Castrol Multi-import ATF as it's the same thing. Castrol makes Type "S" for Nissan. You can also use Valvoline Maxlife ATF, which is what I use in two R51's. Both shift perfectly and I can get a 4 qt. jug of it from Advance Auto Parts for around $22.

smj999smj wrote:There's not really a need to add an external cooler on North American models as they come with an external cooler from the factory and the transmissions seem to be running plenty cool with the factory cooler. Nissan Type "S" replaced Type "J." Unless you like spending twice as much for tranny fluid, you can use Castrol Multi-import ATF as it's the same thing. Castrol makes Type "S" for Nissan. You can also use Valvoline Maxlife ATF, which is what I use in two R51's. Both shift perfectly and I can get a 4 qt. jug of it from Advance Auto Parts for around $22.

Thanks for your imput smj999smj but my reason for adding the external trans cooler was to bypass the radiator altogether so i could save the transmission from going up.

kpath wrote:Thanks for your imput smj999smj but my reason for adding the external trans cooler was to bypass the radiator altogether so i could save the transmission from going up.

I'm not sure you're following this. There are two transmission coolers on the PF. One is built into the engine radiator and the other is an external cooler mounted in front of the radiator. You can by-pass the engine radiator and just use the factory external cooler and everything will work just fine. The engine radiator is the part that has known issues and if it fails will take out the tranny because it mixes engine coolant with transmission fluid. There is no risk of this once you're only hooked to the external cooler.

Are you now using two external coolers in parallel or did you by-pass the factory external as well?