It's been a nice day today so I decided to service the car as its at 88,800 mile and no doubt in a few weeks(at 90k) it will be wet and cold.
Checking Haynes, the gearbox oil needed changing. Some words of wisdom (learned the hard way some years ago)......
ALWAYs check you can undo the filler/level plug BEFORE you undo the drain plug!
On the 75 its fiddly but not too hard if you go in from the passenger side with that wheel off. Both the filler and drain are a T50 torx (not allen although an 8mm allen socket fitted almost as well). Both are tightened to 35Nm so shouldn't be too hard to undo.
With the car level I drained out 1500ml (note to self to buy a new measuring jug for the kitchen). After a trip to Halfords for 2 bottles of Castrol synthetic (CSX fom memory) and a pack of slick 50 gearbox oil I mixed up 1500ml . To make it easier to fill, I used an old funnel with the end cut off and approx 1m length of garden hose jammed in - this is a tight fit in the gearbox filler hole. It was then a simple task to fill the gearbox via the funnel.
When I removed the hose there was no overflow, so I then used the plastic bellows type oilcan that came in the slick kit (designed to extract oil) to top up in 80ml increments. In all it took about 1800ml before the level overflowed (haynes said 1400 on change, 1600 on dry).
The hardest part was getting the filler plug pack in - I ended up putting a piece of tissue paper over the T50 bit so that it gripped the plug to stop it falling off.
Excluding the trip to halfords (and £40) the job took about 20 mins. Time will tell if it makes a difference but I have always used Slick 50 in engine and gearbox on all my cars....and have not had an engine or gearbox failure yet (driving up to 150k in some).
Checking Haynes, the gearbox oil needed changing. Some words of wisdom (learned the hard way some years ago)......
ALWAYs check you can undo the filler/level plug BEFORE you undo the drain plug!
On the 75 its fiddly but not too hard if you go in from the passenger side with that wheel off. Both the filler and drain are a T50 torx (not allen although an 8mm allen socket fitted almost as well). Both are tightened to 35Nm so shouldn't be too hard to undo.
With the car level I drained out 1500ml (note to self to buy a new measuring jug for the kitchen). After a trip to Halfords for 2 bottles of Castrol synthetic (CSX fom memory) and a pack of slick 50 gearbox oil I mixed up 1500ml . To make it easier to fill, I used an old funnel with the end cut off and approx 1m length of garden hose jammed in - this is a tight fit in the gearbox filler hole. It was then a simple task to fill the gearbox via the funnel.
When I removed the hose there was no overflow, so I then used the plastic bellows type oilcan that came in the slick kit (designed to extract oil) to top up in 80ml increments. In all it took about 1800ml before the level overflowed (haynes said 1400 on change, 1600 on dry).
The hardest part was getting the filler plug pack in - I ended up putting a piece of tissue paper over the T50 bit so that it gripped the plug to stop it falling off.
Excluding the trip to halfords (and £40) the job took about 20 mins. Time will tell if it makes a difference but I have always used Slick 50 in engine and gearbox on all my cars....and have not had an engine or gearbox failure yet (driving up to 150k in some).
