Auto Fluid and Filter Change

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Matt Man

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Hey all. I've been lurking here for a bit and really like this forum. Great comradery and a bunch a very informative folks....who can hopefully help me with my question :)

I'll get to it: Looking to change the transmission fluid and filter in my 2001 LS V8. It has 127kmi and shifts a little funky every now and again so I'm hoping to change out all the fluid and put in a bottle of Lucas. I read that just dropping the pan only gets out 5 of th 11.5 quarts, so how do I get the rest out of the converter and where ever else? Also, to refill all 11.5 quarts do I just need that nifty little hand pump I've seen in the other trans threads? Any help is greatly appreciated!

Matt :Beer
 
The easiest thing to do is to pay to have the machine completely exchange the fluid.
You can do it yourself by disconnecting the transmission cooler lines. Pour as much fresh fluid in the inlet line as the old fluid is pumped out the outlet. Keep up or the pump may be damaged. It's not worth the grief to try and save $50/$100 to me.

Don't put the Lucas in! It won't help anything, and it is likely to cause problems.
 
So your vote is to take it to the dealer Joe? I was thinking of doing it, but prefer to do work myself. Plus having a friend of a friend who works at a Honda dealer saying not to trust dealers for lube related items is puttting me off lol. Also, having the machine do it means the filter wont get changed, right?

It sounds like your talking about an electric pump? I was referring to the $15 or so hand pump I have seen others get from the parts store. It screws onto the bottle of fluid and you pump away.
 
Matt Man said:
... Also, having the machine do it means the filter wont get changed, right?
...
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If you want the filter changed, then you will have to pay an additional amount to get them to drop the pan before the exchange. At 127K miles, it's probably worth it to do that.
The factory schedule is for a full fluid exchange every 150K miles. I get the fluid exchange at about 75K miles, and at 150K miles a fluid exchange and filter change.
 
Ok thanks Joe. I'm going to make a few calls tomorrow and I'll post up with pricing. You guys tell me if I'm getting raped or not. I hate paying the dealer for this $hit because I do all of my own work generally.

Matt :Beer
 
Ok so I called to local Lincoln dealer and he quoted me $170 for the just the flush and $325 for the fluid and filter. The other dealer is closed today. Not cool. For that I will just do it myself and only change the 5 quarts in the pan.

Can anyone point to which cooler line is the inlet or outlet? Or can I just pull the lines and let it drain out, then reconnect the lines and start the car while pumping fluid in and will that refill the cooler? Thanks.

Matt
 
If you've never had a fluid change at these high miles you always run the risk of doing more harm than good. All it takes is one fairly small piece of sludge or dirt to become dislodged during the flush process or even due to fresh detergents in a pan fluid change causing sludge to become dislodged. That sludge or piece of crud can then clog up a critical path in the transmission, causing it to overheat due to lack of fluid circulation. Pretty soon, the transmission is dead.

Not saying it WILL happen, but it certainly has happened before. Took my 80k mile M3 to a local German independent shop last year. They said the fluid looked fine (no burnt smell) for it's age and wear, and said that if I insisted on them flushing it/replacing it, that I'd need to come in a sign one of their waivers that released them of any/all liability if the transmission failed due to any sort of overheating condition.

They said they routinely see auto trannys with over 200k on them that have never had a fluid change at all.

I opted to leave well enough alone since the tranny in that car is shifting flawlessly
 
^ This will probably spark a lot of debate as it has been debated hundreds of times on here. Some agree while some think it's complete bs. I tend to lean toward the latter.
 
FWIW, the engineer who ran the calibration teams on both the 5R55N and 5R55S recommends a 30K mile transmission fluid change interval. He also recommended against using additives.

I just spent a few minutes looking through AllData, and the only thing I could immediately find that ID'd the lines was a mention that the return line is shorter than the pressure line. My AllData subscription is for a 2nd Gen LS, so I can't tell you if it's any different on a 1st Gen.
 
Hi lseguy. I have heard what you said before from my autoshop teacher in high school. He didnt specify why, but just said it will do more harm then good. But then again he only filled the oil in his old beater dodge pick-up with old oil from when we changed our car's....so I took it with a grain of salt lol. I would just leave it be, but the car does shift funky sometimes.

SoonerLS thank you for the info on that. I'm thinking of just dropping the pan and changing the filter with those 5 or 5.5 quarts then just topping it off. I will just dump the pan again once I get back from North Carolina in a couple of weeks and put in another fresh 5 quarts and call it a day. I just wanted to make sure the car was in tip top shape before I drove 1,000 miles.

Thanks for the replies
 
Ok, does anyone know the torque for the transmission pan bolts and the filter bolts? Should I use any loc-tite on any of them? Also, do I need a special tool to take out the filter? Thanks again!
 
If you've never had a fluid change at these high miles you always run the risk of doing more harm than good. All it takes is one fairly small piece of sludge or dirt to become dislodged during the flush process or even due to fresh detergents in a pan fluid change causing sludge to become dislodged. That sludge or piece of crud can then clog up a critical path in the transmission, causing it to overheat due to lack of fluid circulation. Pretty soon, the transmission is dead.

Not saying it WILL happen, but it certainly has happened before. Took my 80k mile M3 to a local German independent shop last year. They said the fluid looked fine (no burnt smell) for it's age and wear, and said that if I insisted on them flushing it/replacing it, that I'd need to come in a sign one of their waivers that released them of any/all liability if the transmission failed due to any sort of overheating condition.

They said they routinely see auto trannys with over 200k on them that have never had a fluid change at all.

I opted to leave well enough alone since the tranny in that car is shifting flawlessly
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this can happen even if i take it to the dealer for complete service? man i wish i didn't read this, now i'm wondering. 112k, shifts fine.
 
Just wondering if anyone can answer my questions, as I pick up my new filter and fluid tomorrow. Need to know if I should rent a in-lb torque wrench, because I only have a ft-lb. Thanks!
 
Matt Man said:
Just wondering if anyone can answer my questions, as I pick up my new filter and fluid tomorrow. Need to know if I should rent a in-lb torque wrench, because I only have a ft-lb. Thanks!
Click to expand...
For a 2nd Gen LS, AllData says the pan bolts should be torqued to 8 ft-lbs in a crisscross pattern. It doesn't indicate that any special tools are required for removing or installing the filter.
 
ViC said:
this can happen even if i take it to the dealer for complete service? man i wish i didn't read this, now i'm wondering. 112k, shifts fine.
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I knew a bunch of people who said the same thing about fluid changes in high-mileage transmissions, including some very experienced transmission men. The aforementioned engineer, however, said this notion is hogwash; if the transmission fails after a fluid change, either the person doing the work did something wrong or the transmission was on its way out already. In either case, changing the fluid was coincident, not causative.

You can believe what you want, but, given that his job included dissecting failed transmissions to find out why they failed, I think I'll take his word over "common knowledge."
 
SoonerLS said:
For a 2nd Gen LS, AllData says the pan bolts should be torqued to 8 ft-lbs in a crisscross pattern. It doesn't indicate that any special tools are required for removing or installing the filter.
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Awesome! Thanks again Sooner! I'll snag my dads torque wrench this morning when I go pick up the filter and fluid. I will post up once I finish the job.

Matt :Beer
 
I'm almost done with the filter change now. Just waiting for the motor to cool down then I will check the torque on the drain pan bolts.

The fluid actually looked pretty good in the car. I do not believe this is the cars first fluid change ever. When I bought the car in a auction, the dealer selling it had been the one to maintain it and gave me the Carfax with all of its maintenance history. I have since misplaced it so I'm not sure if the transmission service is on there or not, but like I said the fluid looked pretty good. It was not bright red, but far from brown or black :yuck:

I was going to drop the pan and change another 5 quarts when I got back from driving it to NC, but now I don't even know if it needs it. We'll see if the shifting smoothes out a little. It almost always runs perfect, but lightly jerks from 1st to 2nd occasionally. Fingers crossed :)

Matt :Beer
 
If this was a FLM dealership, they should have recorded the service history through OASIS, and you should be able to retrieve it at http://www.genuineservice.com/. You'll have to create an account, but once you do, you can enter your car's VIN and get synopses of its service visits. They're not as detailed as the service receipts you'd get at a dealership, but they show what type of work was done.
 
SoonerLS said:
If this was a FLM dealership, they should have recorded the service history through OASIS, and you should be able to retrieve it at http://www.genuineservice.com/. You'll have to create an account, but once you do, you can enter your car's VIN and get synopses of its service visits. They're not as detailed as the service receipts you'd get at a dealership, but they show what type of work was done.
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You've been a wealth of information Sooner, thanks! I'll have to check that out for sure.

For as complicated as these cars are and having their little common problems, I friggin love them! When this one finally kicks the bucket (hopefully at well over 200kmi) I will be looking for an 05 or an 06.
 
Lincoln Jealous said:
imo if you havent been getting regular flushes, the first one at high millage could be taking a risk
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Yep. Pat Goss (of Motorweek fame, who owns a shop not far from me in Maryland) told me the same thing. Said at his shop he's seen it happen more than once. An auto tranny doing just fine in an older car, then a fluid flush..then a hundred or few hundred miles later, transmission failure.
He said at his shop now, if a history isnt available, they take a small sample of old fluid from the tranny and examine it. If it looks burnt/very bad, they then decline to do the fluid change. He said the chances of new fluid/fresh detergent dislodging something and causing problems is high.

A local BMW independent (been in business about 30 years) basically told me the same thing.

To each his own, though.
 
I don't necessarily know what to believe but if the fluid is brown, a fluid change isn't gonna hurt that trans since it's probably already on its way out. Transmissions aren't like motors where the fluid just goes bad every so often and gets brown and dirty.

Not saying you guys are wrong at all, but a lot of people take a trans that is already failing into a shop and assume a fluid change is going to make it all better. They get the fluid changed and a few weeks later the trans dies and they assume the new fluid did it. What about the problems they were having before they had the fluid changed? I would bet more than one of these transmissions that miraculously died after new fluid was taken to a shop by the owner hoping that changing the fluid would cure all the trans problems. Hopefully that makes sense...btw, I don't think I ever want type "fluid" that much again in one post - I feel dirty haha
 
if a history isnt available, they take a small sample of old fluid from the tranny and examine it.
Click to expand...

how do they get some fluid? isn't the LS tranny a closed system without dipstick?
 
ViC said:
how do they get some fluid? isn't the LS tranny a closed system without dipstick?
Click to expand...

You can take out the inner one of the coaxial plug on the bottom of the pan and a little fluid will dribble out.
Take the outer plug out and the whole contents of the pan will pour out.
 
myfirstlincoln said:
I don't necessarily know what to believe but if the fluid is brown, a fluid change isn't gonna hurt that trans since it's probably already on its way out. Transmissions aren't like motors where the fluid just goes bad every so often and gets brown and dirty.

Not saying you guys are wrong at all, but a lot of people take a trans that is already failing into a shop and assume a fluid change is going to make it all better. They get the fluid changed and a few weeks later the trans dies and they assume the new fluid did it. What about the problems they were having before they had the fluid changed? I would bet more than one of these transmissions that miraculously died after new fluid was taken to a shop by the owner hoping that changing the fluid would cure all the trans problems. Hopefully that makes sense...btw, I don't think I ever want type "fluid" that much again in one post - I feel dirty haha
Click to expand...

I agree. A correctly done fluid change will only ever help a transmission. However, it won't fix one that is already on its way out. You do a fluid change to prevent problems, not to solve them.
 
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