I am the 2nd owner of a 99 XJ8L that has 40,000 miles on her. PO was my brother who did not do alot of maint except oil changes and replaced the thermostat once and replaced the water pump 2 yrs ago.
Car drives fine with no unusual noises. Love it.
Is there a tranny service recommended and what is a reasonable price to pay for it. Car currently shifts fine. I have owned the car about 18 months and only drive it about 2500 miles per year.
Thanks for any suggestions. Jim

 

Dropping the pan to change the filter and fluid really isn't a terribly complicated procedure. When you do this, you can get up to 1/2 the fluid out, there's still a good portion in the torque converter that won't drain this way, but at your car's age, I would at least do that. With GM transmissions you can disconnect a cooler line and let the transmisison pump itself clean (you let it run until you see bubbles, then quickly pump fresh fluid into the transmisison and keep pumping fresh fluid in until the fluid coming out of the cooler runs clean, but I'm not sure about this process on the ZF transmissions, perhaps someone can comment.)

 

my father replaced the transmission fluid on his 2000 xj8 using the above method. but a little differently.

he got into a fender bender and it broke that fitting on the oil cooler line, fluid completely drained and the car stopped moving.

once home, we topped it off with regular atf fluid from autozone. i was skeptical and told my father that now the transmission is definately toasted. he persisted and we filled it, i couldnt beleive my eyes when i seen the car drive afterwards.

and this is almost 2 years and 30k miles after 1st gear went bad.