PULSCAR ANALYSIS - WHOLE-TRANSMISSION REPLACEMENT: OWNER COMPLAINTS AND MAKER DOCUMENTS (NHTSA PUBLIC FILES)
PulsCar analysis of NHTSA public data, November 2026.
License: CC BY 4.0
Attribution: "PulsCar analysis of NHTSA public data, November 2026."
Published alongside https://www.pulscar.io/blog/transmission-replacement-cost

Scope and dates
Complaints NHTSA received from 1 January 2015 to 4 October 2026 (the latest received date in the files; 782,908 narratives). The index of manufacturer communications, the recalls table and documents downloaded one at a time from static.nhtsa.gov. Anyone can download the NHTSA complaint file and check any number here against it.

1. Complaints
   What was counted: complaints whose narrative names a whole transmission, transaxle, CVT or gearbox as the thing replaced, rebuilt, quoted, new, used or remanufactured, by the wording patterns written in codebook.txt (a part, the fluid, a module, a cooler or a mount does not count as the transmission). 14,125 complaints match.
   Sorting: a random sample of 3,000 of the 14,125 was sorted (random seed 20261104; no complaint was chosen by its content). Each complaint was sorted twice by written rules; the rules are in codebook.txt and the rule used for every disputed complaint is in the column rule_applied. One category (T replaced; B rebuilt; Q quoted or recommended only; A something else done instead; O owner's belief only; N not about this vehicle's whole transmission), three yes/no flags (covered, refused, returned) and the kind of unit named (new, reman, used, unstated). The two sortings matched on 97.0% of the 3,000 on the category; the 293 that differed in any field were settled by the written rules.
   Result: 2,561 of the 3,000 are about the whole transmission of the owner's own vehicle (T 798, B 121, Q 1,455, A 16, O 171); 439 are not. Counts are counts of complaints, not cars.
   Check of the search wording: 400 complaints chosen at random from the 48,395 that mention a transmission but are not in the matching pool were sorted by the same rules; 17 describe a replacement, rebuild or quote in wording the patterns did not match, and 2 more are the owner's belief only. The pool therefore misses some relevant complaints (roughly one in seven on this small check).

2. Documents
   NHTSA's index of manufacturer communications lists documents whose summary names a replacement of the transmission, transaxle or CVT, a remanufactured unit, or a warranty or coverage for the transmission; a second search with different wording added more. Files: 705 distinct manufacturer communications and 271 distinct recall files (from 26 recall campaigns), 58 more that are exact copies of another file. Relevance as recorded in documents.csv: DIRECT 445, PROCEDURE 115, RELATED 293, NOT RELEVANT 123. Where a document group has near-identical revisions, one was read in full and the others were compared with it. Pages with no readable text were read from images. Every quotation in the article was checked against the text of the named document. Years, models, build dates and coverage terms are as printed in the documents, never from NHTSA's index. Coverage status is our reading of the printed terms.
   NHTSA gave no downloadable file for these ids, so they are in documents.csv with read = no PDF on NHTSA: 10083247, 10083794, 10091641, 10093021, 10093130, 10190369, 10190503.

3. Owner-reported amounts (544 figures in 451 complaints)
   One written rule: a dollar figure is included when the owner states it as a price, charge, bill, quote or payment for work or parts on this vehicle's transmission problem (a whole-unit replacement new, remanufactured, used or unstated, a rebuild of the owner's own unit, labor for either, a tied extra such as the converter, flush, fluid, programming or core, a part, solenoid or software, a repair not specified, a diagnosis, a tow or rental, or a deductible). Excluded: mileage, vehicle price or payments, repairs of other systems, settlement amounts, totals that mix unrelated work, repeats and anything not tied to this vehicle. Status comes from the owner's words (paid, billed, quoted, offered, not stated). 875 candidate figures were found and 331 excluded, each with a reason (five further figures that are partly someone else's money or a deposit were left out of the medians by a manual list). Figures are what owners wrote, not audited invoices.

4. Limits
   The complaint file holds cases where an owner wrote to NHTSA, in the owner's words and unverified; owners whose replacement went well are mostly not in it. The shares reported describe the complaints, not all cars, and nothing here is a failure rate. The sample is 3,000 of 14,125 matching complaints. The kind of unit is the owner's word. A maker document is for the vehicles it names; a document that NHTSA's index does not list is not here. Seller and shop price pages are read on one day and are marketing pages.