fluid and filter change today

[Brakebuster]

i have a '94 3.2s , with the non electronic box ( ZF4HP22 )

the fluid was very grey , but the box seemed to be working fine,

but me being me, i obtained the new parts required, transmission fluid , filter and sump pan seal ,

safely jacked and supported the car from the drivers side, undid the filler tube union with a proper large fluid tray underneath , 2.5 litres came out ( measured it ) , removed the six retaining clamps with the use of a 10mm socket, and dropped the pan , removed the filter with a tort bit , x3 long bolts hold the filter

wiped round the exposed valves with a clean cloth to remove any remaining fluid and grey film on the surface, cleaned up the sump and magnets, got the new filter, lubricated the O ring and fixed in place with the x3 long torx bolts, placed new sump seal on sump and offered up to gearbox body , then by hand put in each of the sump clamps, be careful as x2 are different as they have straight holders, the others are four the corners, fitted them all by hand, then went round them about six times gently tightening until tight , but not pinching the seal , put the filler tube back on and tightened the union

then dropped the car to the floor and put oil 2.5 litres of new ATF ,( same as i took out ) , and turned on the car and cycled the gears to pick up the fluid,

will take her for a drive tomorrow and then check and fill if required
took just over an hour


IMG_3482 by MyPix on Talk Photography



IMG_3484 by MyPix on Talk Photography



IMG_3486 by MyPix on Talk Photography



IMG_3489 by MyPix on Talk Photography


didn't take many pics as its very messy , lol





BB

[J44EAG]

That needed changing, Vince! Nasty!! Well black and burned.

Magnets look well coated with metal crud. Perhaps not suprising in view of the age of the car. Probably no previous oil changes on file?

The grey is likely to be moisure induced capacino. Hot, cold cycles over many years. Perhaps change again in six months?

Mike

[davidr]

Well done BB. Looks like that fluid needs flushing through a few times. I would be tempted to change it a couple of times more so the proportion of new to old fluid gets more towards the new.

[Brakebuster]

yup

fully agree with you both.... , thankfully i bought a 25ltr drum of ATF , lol


BB

[poprivet]

A few more Torx screws and the valve block can be taken off. I found it released well over another litre of fluid and the passageways had black stuff in them which was trapped. There are small valves/ball bearings which you need to make sure go back in the correct place and don't run away down the road.

Whilst in there the mechanical governor at the rear of the box benefits from a clean, a build up of the same black stuff can eventually cause problems with the 1st to 2nd gear change where the box hangs in 1st.

That said, even the basic service will do it a lot of good, a good job well done.

[ptjs1]

BB,

Well done but you sooooo need to do a few more changes on that fluid!

I'm just about to post up the story and pics of the same fluid change on my XJS. Mine was a nice red colour before I started but I still did 3 fluid changes before I dropped the filter and then three more changes after I'd changed the filter.

With 9 litres in the system and the ability to suck or drain only 2.5 litres at a time, if you do just one drain, you've still got 72% dirty fluid in there. I suspect after just a few miles, your fluid will be almost the same dirty colour it was before.

Minimum 3 more drain and refills, BB!

Cheers

Paul

[poprivet]

Clean fluid is obviously better then dark but these old mechanical boxes arn't as temperamental as the new electronic ones.

Failures are few and far between even with high mileage non-serviced ones, 'A' clutches fail due more to a design fault, they were beefed up in the HP24 box, governors become sticky but are easily cleaned, clutch packs do wear (causing the blackness).

Nothing will last forever of course, Vehicles using the HP22 are all long past their design lifespan but a little care now and then will certainly prolong them. It is a shame that the design prevents more fluid being drained and that there is no proper filter system, (the gauze used only stops lumps of swarf being picked up and certainly doesn't clean the fluid).

[Brakebuster]

i agree with everyone above, my plan is to do a few miles, get the viscosity constant between old and new, and then drop the fluid at least twice more,

as said, these boxes do go on for quite a while, even if neglected, and hopefully i have put a few more thousand miles into the box


but always happy to receive the combined wisdom of the forum

BB

[Brakebuster]

BB,

Well done but you sooooo need to do a few more changes on that fluid!

I'm just about to post up the story and pics of the same fluid change on my XJS. Mine was a nice red colour before I started but I still did 3 fluid changes before I dropped the filter and then three more changes after I'd changed the filter.

With 9 litres in the system and the ability to suck or drain only 2.5 litres at a time, if you do just one drain, you've still got 72% dirty fluid in there. I suspect after just a few miles, your fluid will be almost the same dirty colour it was before.

Minimum 3 more drain and refills, BB!

Cheers

Paul

just for fun,,,,

if there is 9 litres in there to start, i remove 2.5 and replace the same with new, as you say 72% old remains , so another drain of 2.5 ( 72% old and 28% new ) how does the calculation now work , as I'm now removing 28% by volume of new oil for the second change, lol ( 0.7 litres )

so on and so forth.... with the percentages changing each time

or is it all ' old oil ' once mixed , lol

BB

[J44EAG]

My old S-type came back to me for a service last year. The new owner let his tyre fitters perform a "health check" at the same time as fitting a new boot. Then the car came back to see its former Daddy!

Opening the bonnet, the first thing my eagle eye spotted was the colour of the PAS reservoir...white. Wot? Err?! Taking off the cap, the PAS fluid was white. I`d noted when driving the car into our compound that the steering seemed very light. That was the reason. So the tyre fitter goons had put water in the PAS fluid! Great, thanks a ton.

I bought a 5 litre tub of the correct spec PAS oil and proceeded to extract the old white milky fluid with my electric oil pump. I progressively pulled the reservoir fluid out and replaced with new. With the front wheels jacked clear of the ground, I wound the steering back and forth a couple of times and repeated the extraction and refill proceedure. After eight extractions and refills, the fluid now looked almost as good as new. Two more extracts and refills, the condition of the PAS fluid looked dead right. I returned the car to the owner and said I thought I had caught the problem just in time. Vince Lavender then dropped the ruined old PAS fluid off at the dump on his way home. Three months on, the new fluid still looks pristine.

I would have thought you could appy a similar method to change your gearbox oil now, Vince. The sump has been off and all the crud washed out so you know the condition you are working from. I see no reason why you couldn`t pull a couple of litres out via the dipstick every couple of months. Given such a regime over a few more months would probably get you back to full "as new" oil condition with the converter having had a bit of a flush out at the same time.

I seem to remember that someone markets flushing additive for auto boxes. Regret I can`t remember who it was. I continue to add a can of Wynns engine flush immediately before an engine oil and filter change. That really does get the gunk out. Whether a similar auto box product might be available is worth researching. What you don`t want though is displaced crud blocking up solenoid valves as per the more modern electrical activated gearboxes. Do the older boxes have solenoid activation? Possibly not.

Mike

[ptjs1]

BB,

I went through the same mental process before embarking on my change(s). Yes, all the fluid becomes "dirty" after you've only changed 2.5 litres, but obviously it is "less dirty".

I decided to base mine on an index. I decided that my original 9 litres of fluid was a 6 out of 10 for "dirtiness", where 0 was absolutely clean and 10 was the dirtiest it could be. (although in reality it was probably better than 6 initially) As each rediluted 2.5 litres was replaced with clean it lowered the "dirt index". I decided at the outset that if I was starting with an index of 6, I wanted to get it to an index below 1. After that, the law of diminishing returns sets in. My simple calculations told me that 7 changes of 2.5 litres would lower the index from 6 to 0.61. At that point, I would have used 17,5 litres of clean fluid and would still theoretically have 0.92 litres of the original dirty fluid still diluted in the system. (Even if you changed the fluid 20 times using 50 litres of fluid, you'd still have nearly 15ml of the original dirty fluid left diluted in the system.)

If we said, for example, that your original fluid had a dirt index of 8, then 7 changes totalling 17.5 litres would leave you with a "dirt index" of 0.82. That'll be quite a nice bright red colour.

I'll slightly disagree with Mike (which is unusual!) over the timing. I did only 10 miles between each of the refills as I think with the box and pump working it doesn't take much mileage for all the fluid in the system to get mixed together and I wanted to get it as clean as possible as quickly as possible. For all the post-filter change refills, I used vacuum pump extraction through the dipstick tube. On average I extracted 2.61 litres each time.

I did consider a slightly different approach to try and "push" all the original dirty fluid in the cooler etc out, after the first drain and fill, but unfortunately I couldn't quite manage it and gave up and reverted to my multi-drain approach. You can read about my failed efforts on the XJS Forum later this week!

I've also decided that as it is so easy (and cheap) to do, I'm also going to "suck and fill" 2.61 litres from the box every year as part of my maintenance regime, rather than wait 40,000 miles before the next change!

Paul

[J44EAG]

I`ll not attempt to argue Paul`s usual impecable logic and mathematical extrapolation!

Yes, I suppose the intervals of dilution by driving and almost immediately extracting a quantity of fluid followed by refilling and driving again, would certainly speed up the process. What always concerns me is that you will certainly remove the bulk of contaminate but as we all know, hardened particulate and sludge can hang around on components for quite some time and continue to break up slowely for a further period of time. If you were satisfied with the effect of running that barrel of new oil through the gearbox over a period of indeterminate time, you could still have a quantity of material which is perhaps almost impossible to break down without a gearbox strip and pedantic physical clean up.

I mentioned flushing additives for gearboxes in a previous post. These links now show what a quick internet search kicked up.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... kcuCx4ZNug

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... agefTTw6aw

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j ... wTWjbjuCjw

If any of these additives effectively do what it says on the tin without causing consiquental issues, then they could well help towards an enhanced standard of internal gearbox cleanliness. Using such products if found to be helpful, could perhaps become regarded in the same light as having a Terraclean or similar process performed on an engine. Food for thought?

Mike

[Brakebuster]

gents

many thanks for your detailed and interesting points,

personally i will change out each 2.5 litres once a week when i am able ,


the drain and refill each year is interesting, and something i may well take up , it does make sense ,

she is an old car, with scratched paint and worn seats, this is just maintenance, and not looking for perfection , lol

BB

[Brakebuster]

so

the final gearbox oil refresh was carried out this past weekend

took out the final 2.5 litres , and dropped in the correct amount to get to the line on the dipstick, just over 2 litres , will double check after a run,

results,

well, it seems the gearbox is happier with its new fluid and filter, even if its only about 75% new, the shifts are much smoother, and the gearbox doesn't hunt as much

i do get a gear change smack on 50mph , depending on the road the gearbox wants to shift up or down at the 50mph mark , give it a little gas and it settles down

probably just me over analysing the situation

lol

BB

[poprivet]

Chuck in a bottle of Wynns auto gearbox additive, I found it made the gear changes nicer. Is the 50mph change the lock-up torque converter?