Did this job today. Not too terrible. To get the fill plug off, I had to cut off about 1" or so from a 8mm allen wrench, slide that into the fill plug, and then turn that with an 8mm wrench. No other way to get it loose.

I only ended up using 4.5L of fluid. I ran the transmission through P-N-R-D twice just to be sure I had it right. CTSC folks say that's nothing to worry about...

Cheers, Will

 

Cool!

 

Other than that, it's a piece of cake!!!







That's one thing I miss about the GM cars I've owned over the years, as all you had to do was drop the pan, swap the filter, reinstall the pan, run 4 or 5 quarts of fluid down the dipstick tube, depending on the tranny, and you were good to go. Took an hour, no burned fingers, and cost about $40, in 2012 dollars. I did this every other year, on my cars/trucks......

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you didn't "change" your fluid. The transmission takes 10.13 liters, and you only swapped out 4.5, which is 44% of the fluid. That's more dirty fluid than clean fluid circulating in your transmission.

The right way to do it is to drain the pan, fill it up with fresh fluid, disconnect the line at the transmission cooler, run the car until about 3 quarts comes out the cooler line, add 3 quarts, do it again a couple of times, and then set the level of fluid in the transmission.

 

I fully understand your point, but I have to say that what "macboots" did was certainly better than nothing at all. However, If I was going to go through that much work, I would have taken a little extra time, and changed the pan/filter, too..........

 

Don't pay any attention to the troll who never turns a wrench (lopusspit), you did the change the way ZF recommends, and your car runs great nuff said.

 

I did the pan change and 5.5L of fluid refill this weekend on the grey XF. It's annoying to do only half the fluid, but half new fluid is better than no new fluid. I might drain and refill one more time.

I can tell you that this XF now shifts much better. It's been a little "rubbery" between shifts for a while, but not bad enough to cause alarm, and now with the new filter and fluid, it's shifting very crisply and unnoticeably now like a new car.

Definitely worth servicing the transmission despite the "filled for life" nonsense. My grey XF has 65K miles, and the white one is around 55K miles. I'll do the white one soon.