My Jaguar will hit 50K miles in next couple months. I am ready to service the transmission oil change. I found this ebay selling the oil pan, gasket, and screw for cheap. Please let me knows if its for Jaguar xj8 2004 as advertised.

6HP26 Auto Transmission Oil Pan with Gasket Repair Kit 227 for BMW Land Rover | eBay

 

yes, I would be wary on quality. I've never seen these pans for under $100

 

Probably cheap because shipped directly from China and does not go through a middleman.

 

Don't forget to check the seal where the TCM connection plugs in at the rear of the box. Early seals were not very good and leaked oil that eventually caused grime and dirt to contaminate the plug and socket pins, and lead to spurious fault conditions.

 

Hi,
I called the local (only) Portand OR dealer and was told "don't change the txm fluid". He also said that at $90 per pint the fluid was special for no refill txm's. I only have 72K on mine and don't consider it an important decision, yet. I am very interested what the general consensus of this forum will be on this issue.
On my X-type I drilled a drain hole in the "lifetime" transfer case to drain it on a lift. It was black. It could have been molybdenum but since the transfer system is constantly slipping, I suspect it was not moly. It took several drains to clean up the lube.
BTW I found an official replacement oil. It was a Castrol product. I recall it was an older car lube.

 

Jag nut, my Jag has a leak so i Hav eno chice to replace teh oil pan and sleeve. There's dozen of threads "seal for dead and not for life"

 

Most independent shops recommend a fluid and filter change at the 50-60k mark. Even ZF, the manufacturers of the gearbox recommend a change. It is an expensive thing to do, as the ZF-recommended fluid costs a lot of money. Any owners of a used X350 in it for the long term would be better off changing the fluid at some point. For the first owner who gets-rid when the warranty runs out it's not a problem.


To do the job properly, a full flush to get the old fluid out of the torque converter means a lot of fluid has to be used. Mine cost me several hundred pounds and car has been OK since then, It's now on 103k miles, and I did the job around 60k miles.

 

They are available all over for under $100. You can buy them from German auto parts stores, Euro auto parts stores.

Don't buy from China is pure drivel. It's a freakin piece of molded plastic. Geez.

 

My dealer never recommended a fluid change and at 120k I began to have minor slipping/shifting problems. My dealer mechanic said I needed a new transmission--I went to my independent mechanic for a second opinion and he diagnosed the problem as a low fluid level.

I had him do a full fluid change and replace the pan. Labor was less than $200, but the specialized fluid is very expensive and you'll probably need 5-7 quarts. Plan on about $700 with the pan, gasket, fluid and labor. As I plan on keeping the car for another 100k or longer (obviously, we love the car), I spent a little more on a quality pan. An extra $25-50 for something that I probably won't replace again seemed the sensible thing to do. I'm at 147k now with no transmission problems.

While I could have done it myself by borrowing a friend's lift, I decided it was a little more than I wanted to take on for a first time job.

If you want to do it yourself, there is a pretty good YouTube video on changing the trans fluid on an XJ8. Note that there are several differences on a ZF sealed transmission. First you must be able to measure the temperature with a "laser" or other specialized tool at the transmission in order to know how much fluid to put in. Fluid is installed through a plug on the side of the trans rather than through a tube under the hood. Also, you need to be extremely careful in removing the pan screws. I understand they break off easily and they are a pain to drill out. If you're not an experienced mechanic, I encourage you to research the process for working on a sealed transmission carefully before doing it.

This is my first post on this forum, so I am not familiar with any previous posts, but I would bet that it's been discussed in the past and it would be worth your time to look through the posts on transmissions.

Good Luck.

Dan

 

I too had a small leak from the transmission at 93,000 miles and changed the pan (which incorporates the filter), fluid and electrical sleeve. The torx head bolts (at least on the earlier X 350s) do tend to strip out. I used “Blaster” on the top of the bolts a couple of days prior to removing them and only 4 stripped out; however, I was able to use a new style Kobalt channel lock tool to get the bolts out.

I obtained SNG Barratt’s transmission change kit ($330) which includes 7 liters of fluid, pan, sleeve and replacement bolts with larger torx heads. Everything was high quality.

There is a lot of information on the forum about this project and links to helpful videos. Do be sure you can loosen the filler plug before you drain the fluid. It is tight to get an “L” shaped hex key to the plug. It was also a challenge to get the car properly jacked up and supported so it was level from side to side and front to back – be nice to have a lift (I did not). Monitoring the fluid temperature is tricky. I used an oven thermometer with a flexible probe and monitored the outside pan temperature until it was close to the requirements and then opened the filler plug to get a more accurate reading on the actual fluid temperature.

The fluid change did seem to improve the performance of the transmission. There were no metal fragments in the pan or on the magnets, but the fluid was darker than the new fluid. I expect the fluid level was beginning to get a little low from the slow leakage.

 

I found a video on YouTube that does a pretty good job of showing all if the necessary steps and some of the pitfalls of doing it yourself. There are several others that show the same job. I would like to see more of a demonstration of getting the fluid into the trans, as I think it is more difficult than it appears at first blush.

Dan
2004 XJ8
1989 560SL
1983 911SC

 

If you are going to do a fluid change yourself you might as well do a complete flush using the cooler lines.

This is what I did and it really is not that difficult. Just draining the pan and refilling just means you have new fluid contaminated with old fluid.

Many people seem to do that without any apparent problems but I just did not like the idea of having a mix of old contaminated fluid mixed with new fluid after going through all of the trouble of raising the car, leveling it, and then going thru the refill process and all that it entails!

 

I replaced all my fluid but have not replaced the pan and sleeve. I'm at 88k. My reasoning was that the cooler lines started leaking and when I repaired them I used the lines to complete the flush. I will at some point change the pan and sleeve at this will be done as a drain and fill. Just replacing the fluid took care of the odd lurches the gearbox had developed over time.

 

I was at 100,000 when I changed fluid,pan, and sleeve and the fluid was pretty dark. I was not experiencing any problems with the transmission.

I was quoted $1300 by a local Jag dealer just for a drain and fill. I opted for the Lifeguard 6 as well.

My next job will be the valley hose and supercharger rebuild.