I have read the owners manual cover to cover, no mention is made of the transmission fluid, no dip stick to check level, no type of fluid, nothing!

Is it possible to change the transmission fluid on these cars?

 

Unnecessary. ZF are sealed for life. It is possible but not recommended. Certainly do not do this during the warranty.

 

I am skeptical of "lifetime" fluids in transmissions. Whose "lifetime" are we talking about? Just long enough to outlast the warranty?

Transmissions generate heat and shearing forces that degrade even the best synthetic fluids over time. My prior BMW had a "lifetime" fill policy as well, and I was also told it was "sealed," yet there were fill and drain plugs in it! Automatic transmissions in BMWs (made by ZF, I think) are notorious for failing at around 100k miles. Is the "lifetime" fill to blame? I don't know. But it seems prudent to consider replacing the fluids at some interval. I just don't know what that interval might be, or what kind of fluid goes in, since the factory insists it doesn't need to be changed!

 

I agree which is why I want to change the fluid. Somebody somewhere knows what fluid and how much to put in.

Does anyone have a service manual for these cars? If so, would you mind checking the transmission section to see what it says?

GM used to insist their Dex Cool was 100K mile coolant, I had a 55k miles Jimmy that the fluid turned to powder in and GM insisted I should have changed it and would not help me. I believe they have changed their wording now in relation to the Dex Cool.

I'm a firm believer in preventative maintenance and always change the fluids in my vehicles regularly.

 

This is nonsense. The service life of synthetic lubricants is essentially infinite unless contaminated. Sealing the transmission prevents contamination. Fill and drain plugs are required to permit refilling after repairs should any be required.

Even synthetic engine oils which are seriously contaminated in ordinary operation have service lives well in excess of the capacity of oil filters. Engine oil change intervals are now actually filter changes, the oil is still fine. I noticed my Audi is now fitted with a two year oil filter, from Audi.

Long life coolants last at least ten years, regardless of mileage. Time is the only relevant factor for coolants as it is contact with the metals in the engine that causes the problem. The best green coolants need to be flushed and replaced every two years whether you drive at all or not, as do most brake fluids.

Automotive engineers test their fluids far more extensively than lay people. It is astonishing how often their expert advice is replaced by out of date and incorrect information.

 

i do not agree, there must be wear inside the transmission which can contaminate the fluid as well. In any event the peace of mind that comes with changing the fluid is worth it to me and it couldn't hurt.

Can anyone shed some light on how to change the transmission fluid and what fluid to use?

 

Let me start with a well known cliche. Sealed for life is really sealed for death! I have changed the fluid in my XJ8 2003 several times during its life time and I can tell you when I removed the first fluid, it came out like like tar! Totally dirty and contaminated. This Jag has a ZF tranny and I beleive is similar to the XF. In order to change oil you need to remove the bottom pan. There is a replaceable filter element, gasket and magnets to take care of. The fluid required was an ESSO and is very and I mean very specific and can not be replaced. The tranny has its own pump so you put a small hose inside the filler hole start the engine and the tranny sucks the fluid in until it is full. Pretty straight forward but still a delicate process. It would nice if we could get a JTIS manual for our XFs

 

Ok, so I called my local dealer, the guy stated the units are 'not serviceable' and Jaguar states 'no service required' but on a personal level he finds that to be contrary to his own belief and experience. There is a pan and gasket plus a replaceable filter. There is a fill plug on the side of the transmission.

Research shows the fluid is available commercially :

1) OES Genuine W0133-1695226 Automatic Transmission Fluid $34/quart
2) Red Line Oil W0133-1840587 Automatic Transmission Fluid $12/quart
3) Motul W0133-1896475 Automatic Transmission Fluid $14/quart
4) ZF W0133-1911653 Automatic Transmission Fluid $30/quart

 

So in 2003 you must change the transmission oil which means you must also do so in 2009.

You guys probably keep your stone tool collection also.

The reasoning seems to be:

There must be wear which then contaminates the oil sufficiently to warrant an oil change the transmission manufacturer and the car manufacturer say is unnecessary.

Interesting way to make decisions. Who says there is wear?

Synthetic oil does not break down under the shearing forces in a transmission. Actually, there is very little shear in a planetary gearbox. Modern fwd manual transmissions create very little shear. Some use ordinary multi grade engine oil and have no change interval specified. Some use automatic transmission oil and specify no oil change interval. These are conventional oils, and some manufacturers forbid use of synthetics in these applications. If any gear set in your car might need an oil change it would be the final drive which on a rwd car does develop plenty of shear with its hypoid bevel gearset. What oil change interval are you going to guess at for that? Jaguar says no change is required.

Mess around with your transmission at your peril.

 

Have to agree here. If there was any need whatsoever for a change, dealers would have that as a revenue item in the service book. Cracking a sealed case and messing with fluids is probably more risky than leaving it alone even if minutely contaminated. You may actually introduce contamination not to mention increase the odds of leaks etc down the road.

Are you doing this because you want to drive this car to 200,000 miles? If so, there are many other maintenance items that would probably be a better area of focus....especially when the manufacturer themselves say not to touch it!

 

Check out the high lighted text on page 3 of this document from ZF.

 

There's some info on tranny oil changes on the S-Type section, you'll need to do some searching for them. It has been done and quite successfully.

 

Jagular and all you filled for life folk. You are welcome to leave your fluid in till it turns to asphalt. In other forums where automatic transmissions are used be it Toyota, BMW, Mercedes it is common knowledge that fluid should be changed. For my Toyota Sequoia 2008 change is recommended at 30K miles on a sealed tranny. There are NO mechanical contraptions or machines invented by man where there is physical contact between metal parts where wear and contamination do not take place. It just does not happen period. Fortunately for both of us we are free to change or not the fluid. Until I get my hands on an official JTIS for the XF I will hold back.

 

thanks for resting my case 09XF, no need to change oil unless you are driving miss Daisy. Other wise change it and keep tranny shifting like silk.

 

You do know what a German company means by high speed and offensive driving ( though this latter may have lost or gained a connotation or two in translation from German!).

For North American and most European driving conditions this technical information confirms what I have been saying.

ZF states the oil does not need changing. As for common knowledge I am all too familiar with this old justification. If common knowledge were valuable it would be useful. As it is, common knowledge is usually wrong. That's why companies like ZF issue service information documents.

I have had two manual transmissions fail and neither failure had anything to do with lubrication. I ran one manual transmission for over 300,000 km without any failure or sign of wear filled with ordinary conventional engine oil, no problems although the oil was changed at around 150,000 km when the tranny was out anyway for a new clutch.

I drive reasonably aggressively when the mood strikes me, ms daisy has not ridden in any of my cars.

 

Sealed for life is indeed a misnomer. It depends on how long you want that life to be. And it depends on the planned life expectancy of the vehicle. If the gearbox lasts as long as, say the engine, and the engine does say 100,000miles (160,000 kilometres) or the doors fall off at about the same time, yes the gearbox was okay as ‘sealed for life’. I comprehend that we live in an increasingly ‘throw away’ world: evidence is the box changers that we are forced to acknowledge as “mechanic’s” and who charge the absolute earth for someone else sitting in an office at a computer making all the decisions by remote control (good grief, the bureaucracy is creeping into the ‘real world’; bureaucrats can’t make decisions, either, someone else has to do that for them), but for those of us who have to work hard for our money and are averse to just giving it away to some incompetent trying to empty our wallets for free, a little old fashioned ‘common sense’ (or is that ‘uncommon sense’) can go a long way.

Rique, I just told my partner of your ‘sealed for death’ observation, and I think that may well go up on the workshop wall! Regardless of what isn’t in the service manual, I’d reckon about every 40,000 to 50,000 kilometres (divide by 1.6 you imperialist!) is probably a goodly distance between services. More often if you do a lot of towing.

Auto transmission fluids do one hell of a lot more work than just lubricate. My business partner is the mechanic of our partnership, and he gets to repair or replace lots of 'sealed for life' gearboxes because they have not been given their regular service. If it is your intention to not service the ‘sealed for life’ box, and you do an average 22,000klms per annum, put aside $50 per week in savings for the inevitable cost of replacing or rebuilding your transmission at around 100,000klms. The fluid is especially formulated to lubricate, pressurise, clean, cool etc, and like any product designed to do specialised work, it gradually breaks down. No one in their right mind would continue to run the engine in their vehicle with the same oil, only changing the filter on a regular basis. So why treat your transmission that way?

Besides, if the transmissions weren’t supposed to be ‘serviced’, why do the manufacturers supply filter & gasket kits plus instructions as to which fluid to use for ‘sealed for life’ auto boxes. Upstairs for thinking, downstairs for dancing. What you do with the middle is your business.

Contamination within a sealed box means one thing & one thing only: you have a problem. The only way contamination can occur inside the box, is if something inside the box is coming to grief. Sure, the filter might be collecting the contamination, but it isn’t causing it.

It is the attitude of ‘I paid for, therefore I don’t need to’ that gives the Marques’ a poor service reputation. All mechanical things require maintenance, and the difference in their longevity is directly related to the attendant maintenance they are given. Even Rolls Royce’s require maintenance. You wouldn’t dream of flying in an aeroplane that wasn’t regularly maintained: why treat your beloved wheels any differently? (unless of course, you are one of these owners who just sells the troubles to someone else as soon as they begin to manifest. It’s owners like that who result in Marque’s gaining a bad reputation).

09XFSUPER,

If you look closely at the box, you will find two ‘plugs’ an upper & a lower. You can drain the box by just removing the pan, but you’ll almost certainly get covered in fluid. When you refill, it’s to the bottom of the top plug hole. To identify the correct fluid to use, jump on the box manufacturers website as well as the vehicle manufacturers website to get the information. Don’t rely upon a dealer who simply says, ‘this will do just as good a job’. All too frequently, it doesn’t and it is you who pays the price. Your chances of getting ‘the advisor’ to pay the repair bill are pretty slim. Talk to owners of Jeep Cherokees’ with the Aisin Warner box that Toyota also use a lot of. Chrysler recommend a different fluid, and there are an awful lot of XJ Cherokee’s that come up for sale with ‘broken gearboxes’. The few I’ve experienced (on the side) have been filled with ‘regular fluid’ by the local “mechanic” (including one mechanic himself), and burnt out solenoids, and even a seized converter oil pump have cropped up.

Keep on ‘loving’ your car: it will treat you kindly, and you also are making a contribution to improving the Marque’s reputation.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”

Cheers,

Languid

 

I for one will for sure be changing my transmission fluid, my 2009 has 65k miles on it.

Thank you Languid for some instruction on how to do so.

I found the following instructions posted by a do-it-yourselfer online :

ZF 6HP26 Automatic Transmission Fluid Change
I finally did the dreaded ATF change on the 6 speed ZF transmission. If you read the fine print in the owner’s manual it says to change the ATF at 48,000 kilometers (30,000 miles)if the car is driven in harsh conditions, i.e. stop and go traffic.

Not an easy job, but well worth it.

This is the list of tools and materials:

1. Eight quarts of Pentosin ATF-1. This is BMW P/N 83-22-0-142-516 / 83220142516. It meets the Shell M-1375.4 spec. I got mine for $11/quart at rmeuropean.com You definitely want to have some extra fluid on hand when the job is complete.

2. A 8 mm hex head drive for the fill plug

3. A 10 mm hex head drive for the drain plug

4. A 3/8" universal

5. A 6" 3/8" extension

6. A torque wrench good for 35 Nm

7. A thermometer. Checkers/Kragen has an excellent one with a lot of other features for $103.

8. A procedure, which is available at ZF Friedrichshafen AG | Error - Page not found

9. A fluid pump. The ATF-1 container has a cap that is standard for a one gallon container, so you need the gallon size pump

10. An eight quart drain pan

11. A lot of rags to pick up spilled fluid

You have to get the vehicle at least 18" off of the floor and the car has to be as close to level as you can get it. You want the vehicle to be cold when you are working on it, or at least not hot.

When the engine is off the fluid level in the trans is much higher than the fill plug, so you want to drain the trans before you remove the fill plug. I recommend breaking the fill plug loose before you drain the trans so you are certain that you can re-fill it.

Draining the old fluid is easy. About 6 quarts come out of the pan. The torque on the drain plug is only 8 Nm. replacing the plug is easy, but 8 Nm is not a lot of force!

Removing the fill plug is a bit challenging. It is directly behind the exhaust pipe. There is an indentation in the heat shield that allows you to get the hex head drive with the universal on it into the fill plug. Then you attach the 3/8" extension from the outside of the exhaust pipe. The removal torque was quite a bit higher than 35 Nm.

Putting in the new fluid is also a bit of a challenge. Stuff a rag between the fill line and the exhaust pipe to hold the fill line in place. This is important!

The pan only holds two quarts when the engine is not running. The ZF procedure says to start the engine and to add the remaining four quarts with the engine running. What I did was to stuff a separate rag into the fill hole opening to block the flow of fluid out of the fill hole with the fill line in it, and to pump in a total of about 6 3/4 quarts of ATF into the trans. Don't get carried away (like I did) and try and put a rubber grommett on the fill line to make the seal, as it will get stuck in the fill hole and then drop into the pan when you try and get it out. BTW, removing the pan is very easy. You need a T-27 Torx drive to remove the pan. I put anti-seize on all of the bolts when I put it back on.The seal is an O-ring, and it seems to be re-usable.

At this point you have a cold engine with about 6 3/4 quarts of fluid in the trans, the fill line in the fill hole with a rag that is holding the fill line in place, a separate rag making a seal, and a bit of oil dripping out of the transmission fill hole. The rag seal is not perfect, but it works.

Start the engine, and then run it through all of the gears, holding it in each gear for at least three seconds. I did this twice and I held it in each gear for about five seconds. You do not want any air in the valve body, as it will throw off the fluid level.

Then put the engine in park. The idle speed will drop to 600 RPM.

Remove the rag that is sealing the hole, but leave the fill line in place. You should have some fluid dripping out of the fill hole. If you don't, you have to add more fluid. This is easy, because you still have the fill line in place and it is held in place by the rag. If oil is dribbling out of the fill hole you can remove the fill line.

When the transmission is in park the fluid temperature comes up very slowly. You have plenty of time to insert the thermocouple into the fill hole to monitor the fluid temperature. You have to be very careful, as the exhaust pipe is very hot at this point. You should have a slight dribble of fluid coming out of the fill hole as the temperature continues to rise.

When the temperature hits about 37 C, you want to put an oil soaked rag around the exhaust pipe next to the fill hole. If you don't, you will definitely burn your fingers. As soon as you have the fill plug in the fill hole the dribble of fluid stops and you can turn off the engine. It is then a simple matter of tightening down the fill plug to 35 Nm and the job is done.

The Pentosin ATF-1 seems to work just fine. The trans did not have any problems before the fluid change, and now it shifts just as smoothly as it did before the fluid change.

 

Check out this video showing a transmission fluid change by a do-it-yourselfer :

Zf 6hp26 Transmission

 

Just in case someone might actually change their fluid, it is very important that you un-do the FILL PLUG FIRST before draining any fluid. Why? If as noted above the "challenge" to remove the fill plug turns out to be much more than that, being unable to un-do the fill plug after draining the transmission will leave you with an empty one! (BTW, thanks for the video. It convinced me that I don't want to do this at home!)

I will say this is a very interesting debate. I can certainly see someone rationally accepting the manufacturer's advice not to bother with a fluid change. The transmission could outlast the other parts of the car even with zero fluid changes, or the owner could sell or trade it long before the transmission wears out or fails due to lack of fluid changes. Certainly, one could point the used car buyer to the "sealed for life" language to justify not ever having changed the fluid.

But suppose we are worry-warts, keep our cars for a long time, and don't want to risk having to get a new transmission at 100k miles. Other than money and inconvenience, what is the downside to having a competent tech properly replace the fluid and filter? Would such a task cost much more than a few hundred dollars at dealer rates?

BTW, as for shearing forces, do these transmissions have torque converters? If so, don't they work by using the fluid to transmit torque, and if so, don't the vanes in the torque converters create shearing forces sufficient to transmit the 400+ lbs-ft of torque from the XFR's engine to the transmission? Granted, torque converters lock up to replace the fluid coupling with a mechanical one, but at start it's fluid, so stop and go driving is hard on the fluid, isn't it?

 

Red Line D6 ATF is recommended for the ZF 6HP26 transmission in our cars. It is a full synthetic rather than the partial synthetic that is the factory fill.