Rick (joycesjag), Wayne (cjd777), and I got together at Rick's house on a gorgeous November morning yesterday to do one final ZF drain-and-fill on my wife's 2006 XK8 to ensure that the majority of the ATF in it (about 85%) is Mercon SP. The odometer currently shows 106,300 miles, the car is my wife's daily driver, and its ZF continues to perform perfectly as designed. I simply want to maximize my chances for keeping it that way. We drained right at 4 quarts of fluid out of it by just pulling the drain plug, letting it drain for about 10 minutes, and pumping the fresh Mercon SP into the fill hole while following all the necessary and proper refill steps as outlined by forum member "ccc" quite a few years ago. The three of us have performed this procedure enough times by now that we have it down to a well-choreographed floor show with each of us playing our different roles for maximum efficiency. After we finished the job, we washed up and enjoyed a nice luncheon my wife sent with me while we were telling stories and sharing belly laughs from days and years gone by. It just doesn't get any better than that....

Many thanks once again to Rick and Wayne for a great time yesterday. We don't have a chance to get together very often these days but whenever we do, we always make the most of it. While we worked, Rick's six laying hens (in their new Biltmore House of a chicken coop out at the edge of the woods) laid about a dozen eggs and Rick was kind enough to give the fresh eggs to Wayne and me for the trip home. I'm looking forward to a first-class homemade omelet for dinner tomorrow....

Thanks again, guys! Another memorable day as a result of us meeting here on the Jaguar forum....