I saw various threads here on a drain and refill and kept thinking to myself, what a waste of time? Sure its simple but at the end of the day, you aren't draining out all the old stuff, just merely diluting it.
What if you have the WRONG fluid in there to begin with? In that case a drain and refill wont do.
Just acquired a 2007 aero autobox and while it shifted ok, it was doing a small flare between the 1-2 shift.
I read the PO receipts and found that about 3 months previously, they had the transmission oil changed. Sounds good right? Nope, they used the Castrol universal import ATF fluid. Im sure it might have been ok, but given the sensitive nature of these autoboxes, I felt this stuff needed to be completely removed.
So what we want to do here is use the built in pump of the autobox to push through new stuff. We AREN'T using a flushing machine here as its expensive and might push some debris through that we don't want to disturb.
Bear in mind, I own a mechanic garage lift and makes this job a piece of cake. If you need to use ramps, you will need to jack up the rear end to make it level.
Step 1: Remove the drain plug on the bottom and drain fluid, put it back in once drained. You will need a 12mm allen socket for this. I don't have this tool and a set of vice grips worked just fine for removing it.
Step 2: Remove battery and battery tray then remove fill plug. The fill plug is more or less under the turbo and needs a T55 torx bit to remove. It will be tight. Once the fill plug is removed, just shove a funnel in there. Reinstall the battery without the tray, it should sit on the side just fine resting against the turbo heatshield (wont hurt anything).
Step 3:Fill with 3 liters of new fluid.
Step 4: Remove the 10mm nut that holds the ATF cooler lines to the transmission.
Step 5: Remove the transmission lines from the transmission itself. Try to pull straight out, its tight but they do come out in one piece. Approx 400ml of fluid will come out of the transmission lines.
Step 6: The ports on the transmission are 10mm accross. We will need to make a plug for one port and connect a hose for the other. I found that about two feet worth of 1/4inch fuel line hose is all we will need for this job. Cut off a 2" section of hose and stick a bolt in there. This will be the "plug".
Step 7: Push in your "plug" into the TOP port coming out of the transmission. It only needs to go in about 1/2" to seal. I found that oil doesn't drain out of this port as much as I thought, this is more or less for just in case some dribbling occurs.
Step 8: Put in your remaining section of hose to the LOWER port (See photo for where it needs to be). This will be the "pressure" side of the transmission of where oil will be coming out of.
Step 9: Make sure you have a container that can hold about 1 gallon of fluid, a windshield washer fluid container works best for this. Mark off a 3liter line on the container.
Step 10: Critical, you will need a friend for this. The friend will need to start the car while the hose is in the receptacle. They will need to turn off the car once 3 liters is emptied into the container.
Step 11: Add 3 liters of fluid and start car, repeat 1 more time. The idea here is that you will have removed 3l of fluid from the drain and an additional 6l from the hose method.
Step 12: Add 3 liters of fluid, keep the car running and remove the small allen bolt on the bottom of the drain plug. This is your "level check" of the transmission fluid. Some fluid SHOULD come out. If it doesn't, add some fluid until you see some come out.
Step 13: As the car warms up, the fluid expands with heat and will dribble out of the check hole. Put it in D and R two times then park. Let the car run for about 20 mins at idle, it should stop dribbling by then. The idea here is to get the ATF fluid up to temperature. Unless you have a tech 2, you wont know when the ATF fluid hits 80dec C. I found that it gets there after 20-25 mins at idle.
Step 14: Put in the allen bolt and lower the car.
Step 15: Add exactly 400ml of additional fluid and install the filler plug.
Step 16: Put in the battery and tray as it should.
Done!
Type of fluid:
This is a monstrous point of contention. The spec is AW1 fluid which came out around 2005-2006. The ford fusion used the same TF-80SC and ford said to use motorcraft XT-8-QAW or Toyota type IV fluid.
However if anyone looks this up, you will find that its the same thing as mobil 3309 fluid which is specd for the 5sp autoboxes So why is the spec AW1 for Saab and 3309 for ford? I dunno, maybe ford knows something we don't but I didn't take a chance.
After a month of research it turns out that aisin atf-0ws meets AW1 spec. This is also the exact same stuff as Toyota ATF WS. I got a 12 pack at Toyota for 80 bucks Canadian which is way cheaper than 22 USD a quart for the real AW1 stuff on eeuroparts.
Anyways, I have Toyota WS fluid in there and it appears to work great, it removed my 1-2 shift flare.
If I get any issues, I will update the thread and put in the real expensive AW1 stuff and go from there.
What if you have the WRONG fluid in there to begin with? In that case a drain and refill wont do.
Just acquired a 2007 aero autobox and while it shifted ok, it was doing a small flare between the 1-2 shift.
I read the PO receipts and found that about 3 months previously, they had the transmission oil changed. Sounds good right? Nope, they used the Castrol universal import ATF fluid. Im sure it might have been ok, but given the sensitive nature of these autoboxes, I felt this stuff needed to be completely removed.
So what we want to do here is use the built in pump of the autobox to push through new stuff. We AREN'T using a flushing machine here as its expensive and might push some debris through that we don't want to disturb.
Bear in mind, I own a mechanic garage lift and makes this job a piece of cake. If you need to use ramps, you will need to jack up the rear end to make it level.
Step 1: Remove the drain plug on the bottom and drain fluid, put it back in once drained. You will need a 12mm allen socket for this. I don't have this tool and a set of vice grips worked just fine for removing it.
Step 2: Remove battery and battery tray then remove fill plug. The fill plug is more or less under the turbo and needs a T55 torx bit to remove. It will be tight. Once the fill plug is removed, just shove a funnel in there. Reinstall the battery without the tray, it should sit on the side just fine resting against the turbo heatshield (wont hurt anything).
Step 3:Fill with 3 liters of new fluid.
Step 4: Remove the 10mm nut that holds the ATF cooler lines to the transmission.
Step 5: Remove the transmission lines from the transmission itself. Try to pull straight out, its tight but they do come out in one piece. Approx 400ml of fluid will come out of the transmission lines.
Step 6: The ports on the transmission are 10mm accross. We will need to make a plug for one port and connect a hose for the other. I found that about two feet worth of 1/4inch fuel line hose is all we will need for this job. Cut off a 2" section of hose and stick a bolt in there. This will be the "plug".
Step 7: Push in your "plug" into the TOP port coming out of the transmission. It only needs to go in about 1/2" to seal. I found that oil doesn't drain out of this port as much as I thought, this is more or less for just in case some dribbling occurs.
Step 8: Put in your remaining section of hose to the LOWER port (See photo for where it needs to be). This will be the "pressure" side of the transmission of where oil will be coming out of.
Step 9: Make sure you have a container that can hold about 1 gallon of fluid, a windshield washer fluid container works best for this. Mark off a 3liter line on the container.
Step 10: Critical, you will need a friend for this. The friend will need to start the car while the hose is in the receptacle. They will need to turn off the car once 3 liters is emptied into the container.
Step 11: Add 3 liters of fluid and start car, repeat 1 more time. The idea here is that you will have removed 3l of fluid from the drain and an additional 6l from the hose method.
Step 12: Add 3 liters of fluid, keep the car running and remove the small allen bolt on the bottom of the drain plug. This is your "level check" of the transmission fluid. Some fluid SHOULD come out. If it doesn't, add some fluid until you see some come out.
Step 13: As the car warms up, the fluid expands with heat and will dribble out of the check hole. Put it in D and R two times then park. Let the car run for about 20 mins at idle, it should stop dribbling by then. The idea here is to get the ATF fluid up to temperature. Unless you have a tech 2, you wont know when the ATF fluid hits 80dec C. I found that it gets there after 20-25 mins at idle.
Step 14: Put in the allen bolt and lower the car.
Step 15: Add exactly 400ml of additional fluid and install the filler plug.
Step 16: Put in the battery and tray as it should.
Done!
Type of fluid:
This is a monstrous point of contention. The spec is AW1 fluid which came out around 2005-2006. The ford fusion used the same TF-80SC and ford said to use motorcraft XT-8-QAW or Toyota type IV fluid.
However if anyone looks this up, you will find that its the same thing as mobil 3309 fluid which is specd for the 5sp autoboxes So why is the spec AW1 for Saab and 3309 for ford? I dunno, maybe ford knows something we don't but I didn't take a chance.
After a month of research it turns out that aisin atf-0ws meets AW1 spec. This is also the exact same stuff as Toyota ATF WS. I got a 12 pack at Toyota for 80 bucks Canadian which is way cheaper than 22 USD a quart for the real AW1 stuff on eeuroparts.
Anyways, I have Toyota WS fluid in there and it appears to work great, it removed my 1-2 shift flare.
If I get any issues, I will update the thread and put in the real expensive AW1 stuff and go from there.
