Next up was time to change the trans and oil fluid back in July at 77,657 miles. I used the recommended 0W40 (Mobil One full synth) and Pentosin ATF-1 which according to Pelican Parts is the correct spec for Porsche auto trans without paying through the sun-no-shine-hole for the Porsche logo being on the bottle.
The engine oil was OK on miles, but had been there for a few years so I wanted to change it. The auto fluid I could find no evidence of it having been changed and in 'D' the trans always seemed to set off in 2nd and be slow to up or down E36 M3 although everything worked fine when in manual mode (remember this is a regular auto, not a PDK) That seems to be a common issue with old dirty fluid in these cars and changing it seems to fix a lot of ills.
OF course, one of the joys of this being a mid engined car with no (normal) access from above, is that this job is a pain in the ass. It took something like six hours all in, which is longer than it takes me to change the alternator on an SVT Contour which internet lore states is an almost impossible two day exercise.
The bits. And BTW I love me new roll about Harbor Freight tool box. It now has all my metric stuff in it while everything else is in my original non movable Craftsman box back in the garage.
First jacking the car up. It turns out the jack points are pretty mangled. This is the one of the one on the right hand side. Pretty buggered up isn't it?
This is the one on the left, or more accurately this is where the left hand side one is meant to be. Totally missing!! How the hell can the jacking point be completely gone!! You need to have the car level, not just one end jacked up as it needs to be level for filling the trans as will be seen later.
So once in the air step one is to remove the under tray, this allows you to reach the trans to drain the fluid. The trouble is to remove the under tray you need to remove eight nuts to lower the two aluminium chassis braces that then allow you to remove the under tray! You also need to undo the rear sway bar so it can be lowered enough to remove the trans oil pan.
The old trans fluid while not sparkling looked cleaner than I imagined it would after (what I assumed to be) 16 years and pushing 80k miles. Here is it coming out.
With the fluid drained I could remove the pan. All nice and clean in there.
This is the old filter. It doesn't look horrible in there either. At this point I was a bit worried, it all seems better than I expected so I was wondering about the poor shift quality in 'D'
Note. These are the same size, strange forshortening effect witht he camera makes the old one look smaller.
Anyway while letting every last drop of fluid drip down I also changed the engine oil, this prompted the first of three trips to the auto parts store. In my collection of oil filter wrenches I assumed I had one that would fit. Nope. Off to get one. Inevitably the POS stamped cheap, E36 M3ty steel with non-existent tolerances just slid on the filter. Back to get one of the wrap around ones which I’ve always found useless as there is never enough room for them, but this time I had success. So change the oil and fill it up no issue..
Back to the trans. Swap out the trans filter for the new one and pop it in place. then time for a refill with fresh fluid. There is no fill plug on the top or the side of the trans you need instead to fill from the bottom with a pump. This is what the pan looks like (pinched from Pelican)
See that yellow tower, it’s what you fill through. You pump in fluid until there’s enough in to flow out. That’s the correct level.
Of course I didn’t have a hex large enough to fit the plug so that was the third trip to the parts store to get one.
The process is you put it all back together (after a good cleaning, new filter, gasket etc. and torque up the cover in the correct order to 8 ft/lb’s which is about the torque a sparrow farting at the end of a ratchet produces) then pump fluid up into it until it spills out. They you put the plug back in and run the engine until an infra-red thermometer tells you the bottom of the pan is between 85-100 °F. Then you shut it off, remove the plug, top up, replace the plug then rinse and repeat until no more can go in which was four rounds for me. One thing, it really seems to me that more fluid came out than went in, so I wonder if there had been too much fluid in there and/or I didn’t manage to really fill it up.
After that refit the under-tray, replace the aluminium braces and the 8 nuts then drop her to the ground and test drive time.
Regardless, wow, what a night and day difference in shift quality, it engages 1st more often, the shifts don’t’ hang up and are sooner and smoother than before. Considering the that a) the fluid that came out didn’t appear to be that berkeleyed up and b) doing this only changes at best 1/3 of the fluid in there It’s an amazing difference. I think I’ll make this an annual thing for a while until I’m sure it’s all fresh fluid in there.
All done!
