Both manual and automatic transmission require fluid, to quite literally keep the gears turning. The two fluid types are actually pretty different.
Manuals are a dying breed in the modern car market. Especially in North America, most of the cars that are sold have an automatic transmission, but we’re not here to talk about manuals vs. automatics. Regardless of how you shift your gears or how the transmission shifts for you, transmission fluid is a necessity. A transmission is made up of gears, meaning you need ample lubrication so metal doesn’t rub against metal and cause damage.
While it might be common to think that all sorts of transmissions need a similar type of transmission fluid, there is quite a lot of difference between the two. This is mainly due to a few reasons, which depend on what properties are required from the specific fluid. Both transmissions require fluids with different properties.
Regardless of which transmission you might have, the main purpose of transmission fluid is to enable smoother shifts, prevent from wear and tear and resist heat. Manual and Automatic transmission fluids are different because of how these transmissions work. In this article we will mainly focus on torque converter automatic fluids. CVT transmissions are different compared to regular automatics and so are dual clutch automatic transmissions both of which are also considered automatics, and all of them require different types of fluid.
