Please understand I'm not saying a Gen 6 Accord EX with the V6 will be as cheap/easy to maintain as say a similar vintage Civic or Corolla with a 5-Speed manual, crank windows, and conventional HVAC; what I am trying to say is that for a nice mid-sized V6 sedan, the Accord will be on par (or better) compared to pretty much any other car of that ilk which is 15 years old and has well over 100,000 miles on the clock.

 

WRONG. I have ran a transmission shop before so I do know what I'm talking about.

Anything like brakes pads, or clutches wear in normal use. The filter catches all of that debris, otherwise why even put a filter in a transmission.

So the filter starts getting clogged up with gunk, which causes a decrease in the transmissions fluid ability to circulate, which causes heat buildup, which causes the clutches/steels to wear even more.

I've also been building Ford transmissions for the local drag racers here on/off for about 30 years, and I can tell you that HEAT is the number one killer of transmissions. [lack of proper size cooler, or clogged filter, or both].

I won't go to the mat on stuff I don't know about, but this stuff I do know.

In fact I have just rebuilt a Honda transmission, and was really on the fence just to leave out the factory filter [as there wasn't one in my rebuilt kit] since I was also installing an external filter.

 

While it is true clutch material does get trapped in the filter, as do small wear metals, the filter is easily large enough to deal with hundreds of thousands of miles of particulate.

I won't argue the issue about heat, as I agree that is the biggest issue for automatic transmissions; that said, I will certainly argue flow through the filter is not a contributing factor in excess heat.