I did this job the other week and took a few pictures as I went along, thought a 'how two' write up would be in order for people who want to try this at home.
Reasons for changing your gearbox oil
Gearbox oil is not normally changed as common as engine oil and is easily forgotten about or overlooked despite it being a relatively simple job. Quite often people will ask themselves 'why would you want to do that?
Well if your 2 has any of the following symptoms, you may be in need of a gearbox oil change:
Hard to change in to or out of gear when accelerating or decelerating
Loud transmission
Jerky clutch engagement
Gearbox oil is subject to extreme temperature changes, minute metal shavings, and sludge build up (through the breather), so changing you gearbox oil is just as important as changing your engine oil. Here's something to ponder, what is the point of having lots of HP if you can't get it through the gearbox to the wheels?
Tools for the job
Car jack
Axle stand
Wheel brace
24mm ring spanner or socket with long arm extension
Funnel
Hose / jiggle siphon
5 litre Oil catch tray
You may also like to have ready
A spare set of hands to help with filling, checking, chatting etc
Some old newspapers/rags for spills
Some driveway cleaner (If you are a gumbee like me)
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Baby wipes, they make your hands smell fresh! :cheer:
Oil
I used Redline MT90 although there are numerous other transaxle oils that are available.
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NOTE: I had
four bottles, the photo just looked better with three.
MT90 is expensive! however since I used it it has cleaned up all of those shifting problems that I was getting. As I mentioned before this oil isn't changed that regularly so it's probably worth putting something decent in there. There are other synthetic oils like Royal purple etc that I have heard of, they seem to be well regarded also, however one thing to note for the MR2 is if you have a limited slip diff, you want to get an oil that is suitable for it as your differential is built in to the same housing as the gearbox.
Step 1:
Position your car on a flat surface or reasonably flat surface (this is important)
Jack up your 2, remove the passenger(RHD) side wheel and put an axle stand in to ensure if your jack fails you don't damage your discs/suspension
Step 2:
Using your 24 mm spanner or socket, loosen off the gearbox filler bolt (circled in red in this picture).
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The reason for taking off the filler bolt first is to:
ensure that you can get new oil back in to the gearbox before getting rid of your old stuff
make it easier for the old stuff to drain out without creating too big a vacuum (it's thick and takes a while)
check to see if your gearbox was overfilled the last time
For the last point there you will want to have your drip tray underneath the bolt before you take it all the way out in case any of the oil spills.
Step 3:
Now move your tray over to the oil drain bolt position further towards the back of the car. Remove the drain plug bolt but be ready - the oil will come out in a bit of a rush ...
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You will find that the oil takes quite a while to drain out, I left mine for about 30 minutes or so, the above picture was taken towards the end of that. Around this time I adjusted the height of my car so that the oil was quicker to run out of the drain, just to note however that you want to be careful doing this as a tilted car can fall of a jack really easily *beware*.
Step 4:
Once you are happy that the oil is removed, you can go ahead and put the drain bolt back in and tighten it up. Torque specs (x) It is then time to run a hose in to the gearbox filler that we opened up in Step 2 and put the other end in your new oil container. I used a jiggle siphon, however I found that the oil was too thick to be able to work through with jiggling and I had to get under there and apply some suction to get the oil flowing.
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MT90 does not come in one big bottle, so I had the extra challenge of trying to change bottles without having to restart the siphon as well (gearbox oil does not taste nice :X ), this is where my funnel came in, and also the help of a budding young scientist who would otherwise be playing NINTENDO
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Step 5:
Once you get fluid coming out of the filler hole (the high one towards the front of the car), then you know that the gearbox is holding enough, you might want to check one more time that the car is level. Because my hose was a snug fit in to the filler hole, I landed up overfilling it a touch, this did not matter as once I pulled out the hose it emptied out in to the tray and got to a level position.
In all the E153 transmission took about 3.7 litres of fluid to fill. I would recommend you confirm what transmission is in your car before starting or else you might over buy (I think the S54 does not hold as much - not sure if they ever came in Irish or JDM 2's though?)
Step 6:
Let the excess oil run in to your tray then put your filler bolt back in and torque it like you did the drain bolt, if you spilled oil give it a wipedown/clean, pop your wheel back on, let the car down and then take your oil to the recycling centre.
Sometimes the oil takes a day or two to work its way in to all of the gears, give it a couple of days and then post back up here in this thread to let people know how it worked out for you and your 2!
