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Do shops, maybe especially chains, take the public by recommending rebuilds when partial work would do?
What do you consider a likely mileage limit to need a rebuild? REalizing make/model may affect this, but: 100k - 125k - 150+? Of course someone's Aunt Fanny has a car with 250 that's never needed work.. but what's average?
There is no average mileage a transmission will last. It all depends on how it was used, and how it was maintained.
Under ideal conditions a transmission can last 150-200k miles. If you pull a heavy overloaded trailer and drive like a fool, it may die at 40 or under.
I maintained a large fleet. We serviced the AT's every 20k miles, and most all of the cars lasted until we sold them off, well over 100k. Our Police cars, which obviously got trementiously hard use, it wasn't uncommon to replace them at 50-60k miles. Usually by the time we reached 70-90k, the whole car was a smoldering heap, and they were serviced end to end every 30 days, so how a vehicle is driven makes all the difference on how long any component will last...
Heat is the enemy of transmission fluid. Drive like a normal human being, service the trans at the proper mileage, and it will last a very long time.
As far as shops recommending un-needed work, like every profession, there are good guys, and bad guys, and a lot in between.
It's always best to find an independent shop you can trust, form a relationship, and use them until the day you die. Just like you would a doctor or accountant, stay with them, don't be jumping around trying to find a cheaper price. Being cheap and cutting corners can be very expensive...
Most automatic transmissions have to come out of the car for major work, there is not that much you can do with the trans in the car. For example the AT in a 2nd generation Camry, you can change the fluid, you can clean the intake screen, you can get the valve body out, pretty much in this order by taking the pan off the bottom of the transola.
Beyond that, it's got to come out of the car, once it's out, you might as well swap it for a reman, rebuild it thoroughly, or exchange it for a used unit from a junkyard.
Donn 2390 nailed it. Heat, exacerbated by dirty fluid is the killer. When I was driving 50K plus miles per year I always had my fluid changed at about 35K-40K intervals, every 7th oil change. I usually kept my "company" cars 3 to 5 years and the last tranny "failure" I experienced was in my '78 Caprice, inherently bad tranny in those puppies and the hint of a lawsuit got the dealer to eat 99% of the charges, it was a "hidden warranty".
Since we now only put 10-12K per year on our cars and keep them about 7-8 years we don't expect to ever have a bad tranny.
Do not do any "partial" transmission anything. You will regret it. I also don't recommend rebuilding a transmission.
True story:
Back in 2001 or thereabouts I had a 96 Sebring that I bought from a used car lot. Being that it was the first car that I actually enjoyed, it was an impulse purchase that I later regretted - didn't test drive it or anything. It started going into limp mode when I would drive it for extended periods. I didn't know that the limp mode (where it sits in what feels like first gear) was effectively a safety measure telling me that the transmission was going bad so I could get it serviced. At the time I wasn't making any kind of good money, and the job was essentially at the top of a mountainous region. You can imagine how much pain that car went through.
Anyway, one day I was driving home on the freeway, about 65. Got to a bridge, heard and felt a loud CLUNK and my entire front end went down. Then a loud grinding noise, presumably against the street. I skidded for quite a bit and managed to get it over to the left side of the road. Turns out the transmission completely failed, and I think even disconnected from the car somehow. I was going to get a replacement transmission from a junk yard, one from a newer car with less mileage and a better chance of being top notch, but my father yelled at me about having a shop do it. So we took it to this rundown shop, they rebuilt it.
The car was never the same after that. It would catch when coming to stops, engine reving, etc. It never broke down again, but it just wasn't the same.
All transmissions have components that are designed to wear out, mainly clutches and brakes, within 50k-250K miles depending on the severity of use. Anything other than a rebuilt unit is gambling. Change your fluid (and filter if possible) often enough to flush out the clutch material and other debris and keep going till something feels wrong.
If you take pride in your car are going to have your transmission rebuilt make sure you fix it early before the hard parts start going and you end up with a basket case.
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