Initial inspection of A500
If you have a lift and a trans jack and all the air tools, then dropping your trans after a few months will be a real pleasure. Then you can find out that it's about as complicated inside as a carburetor. Actually, just refurbishing the front guts is simpler than a carb. "When there isn't enough time to do it right; there's always enough time to do it twice." Why anyone would trust flimsy 904 guts is beyond me; when it's twice as easy to check it out than to tear the thing all back out again. You've got a lot of different types of debris in that pan and filter. No way I would trust that trans. I hope I'm wrong.
Not trying to argue with you on it, but one of my jobs in the business was to do the pan drop inspections when vehicles came in for a filter and fluid service.
One of the laws where I lived said we could not use the pan content to convince a customer that they needed a rebuild unless the customer asked to see it.
(This was because the pan content could be used to scare a customer into a rebuild they didn't need, because they can look kind of scary to someone not familiar with normal wear contents)
(Not saying you are not, but that the average Joe isn't)
I would tell them that the law was as such, and most of the time they would ask.
They would kind of freak out about a pan like the one above and I would tell them it was actually fairly normal.
I saw thousands of pans that looked like that and wouldn't recommend a rebuild unless the pan had the black flakes, extreme amounts of material stuck to the magnet or the trans exhibited issue's.
Clutch and front band material comes off in black flakes when toasted and the fluid looks well used but not burned, and that collection of junk on the reverse band servo very likely got there from the trans being flipped over.
