vixen_w202
02-27-2013, 10:50 PM
Well, I'm really excited and happy to say for the first time in my life I did a major service on my car without any help whatsoever. Before tonight I felt too intimidated to do my own work on the drivetrain of any car I've owned, but tonight I killed that fear by starting off with attacking the differential. I bought 2 litres of this stuff:
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/526208_4490655509979_1030555854_n.jpg
People on here will probably give me shit for not using proper Mercedes Benz fluid, but I heard good stuff about this and it didn't break the bank. I also figure since I'm trying to get more performance out of my car it will probably be wise to use more performance-oriented fluids.
It was a slow and frustrating but indeed fun experience. By the time I was done my hair, hands and jeans were covered in grime and spilled differential oil but I managed to get it finished using elbow grease and basic hand tools in less than 3 hours.
Also, not sure if he is a member here but special thanks to Youtube user fupabox. I watched his tutorial on how to do the service and it helped me once I got started. When I drained out the oil I can say probably without a doubt this thing was never serviced since it came off the line in Germany. The old oil was pitch black and when I drained it out of my mop bucket there was a ton of sludge residue in the bucket. The major pains however were getting the fill and drain plugs loose and finding a way to actually get the new fluid into the fill plug (the lucas bottle would not fit into the really tight space where the fill hole was).
Here's sort of where redneck/ghetto engineering came handy for once; like I said I could not get the bottle to fit into the fill hole, and even with a few different funnels that extended into the hole there was just not enough angle for the new oil to drain in and it kept trying to spill back onto the cement. Frustrated, I cussed a little bit and took a break and got something to drink....
Before the garage where I life there is a storage room that is right before it, and we have a lot of miscellaneous junk stored in it. This crazy idea came into my head if I could find some extremely flexible plastic/rubber tubing....I could force feed the fluid into the differential by blowing into the tube by mouth. Crazy enough, there was this sort of hand pump for a water tank still in plastic wrapping in the back of the storage room. On it was a flexible plastic tube that was just the right width to fit into the hole with a long nipple. I knew it had been long forgotten about, so I opened it and cut the tube off. I had to cut the nipple to fit but I got it to seal in there, and things after this got kinda *funny*.
After spending twenty minutes trying to route the pipe through some suspension parts and up through the back left fenderwell, I got enough downward angles for the fluid to at least travel some on its own. I started feeding in the lucas oil, then I literally put my mouth over the tube and started blowing as hard as I could till I had to take another breath. I did this for a few minutes, then I got underneath to check how much of the oil had gone in. Successfully and crazily enough, my idea worked. The only thing that backfired on me was I guess because I was thinking so fast when I went to check how much fluid had gone in....I had forgotten to take the tube out of my mouth and because of that all the remainder of the oil that was still in the tubing greeted me in my mouth......fyi, brand new gear oil tastes like 1,000 year old rotten Caesar salad dressing.....find a better way to introduce the new oil into the differential than me.
I kept doing the mouth to the feed tube thing for another 20 minutes as I added more oil. I kept trying to add more and more, but I was concerned I might overfill the differential with too much. I couldn't seem to get the thing to the point where it was overflowing out of the fill hole, but I put in my finger a few times and felt around the level....it was pretty darned close to the top. So even in my opinion it was not 100 percent full, it was close enough for me and I was getting really tired...so I called it success and buttoned back everything up!
I drove the car for about 15 minutes around my neighborhood, and man what an improvement! I can't confirm this as I'm not a mechanic, but I swear it seems like the transmission is not shifting nearly as hard and it's revving a little bit lower around town and on the freeway.
This is only part one of a major service overhaul on the drivetrain. Within the next few days I've gotta head down to my nearby dealer and pick up a transmission filter and gasket for the pan (I can't find these locally at places like autozone because they say they can't get those parts, so I'm assuming it's either a specialist shop or the dealer only???). Then I'm going to attack the oil pan gasket and replace that too, along with getting some genuine Mercedes Benz Radiator coolant. I wanted to use something else, but I've really been told by people like Christopher and others that I really have to run official Mercedes coolant. I haven't serviced my radiator before, but I did add some peak 50/50 coolant when I got it as it was low. To me 45 dollars a bottle for coolant is silly, but if people tell me on here I need to run it I will.
P.S. After that *fun* experience with tasting gear oil, I had to wash my mouth out four times with some hardcore mouthwash and even after that I can still taste the oil in my mouth, haha....
Fun day.
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/526208_4490655509979_1030555854_n.jpg
People on here will probably give me shit for not using proper Mercedes Benz fluid, but I heard good stuff about this and it didn't break the bank. I also figure since I'm trying to get more performance out of my car it will probably be wise to use more performance-oriented fluids.
It was a slow and frustrating but indeed fun experience. By the time I was done my hair, hands and jeans were covered in grime and spilled differential oil but I managed to get it finished using elbow grease and basic hand tools in less than 3 hours.
Also, not sure if he is a member here but special thanks to Youtube user fupabox. I watched his tutorial on how to do the service and it helped me once I got started. When I drained out the oil I can say probably without a doubt this thing was never serviced since it came off the line in Germany. The old oil was pitch black and when I drained it out of my mop bucket there was a ton of sludge residue in the bucket. The major pains however were getting the fill and drain plugs loose and finding a way to actually get the new fluid into the fill plug (the lucas bottle would not fit into the really tight space where the fill hole was).
Here's sort of where redneck/ghetto engineering came handy for once; like I said I could not get the bottle to fit into the fill hole, and even with a few different funnels that extended into the hole there was just not enough angle for the new oil to drain in and it kept trying to spill back onto the cement. Frustrated, I cussed a little bit and took a break and got something to drink....
Before the garage where I life there is a storage room that is right before it, and we have a lot of miscellaneous junk stored in it. This crazy idea came into my head if I could find some extremely flexible plastic/rubber tubing....I could force feed the fluid into the differential by blowing into the tube by mouth. Crazy enough, there was this sort of hand pump for a water tank still in plastic wrapping in the back of the storage room. On it was a flexible plastic tube that was just the right width to fit into the hole with a long nipple. I knew it had been long forgotten about, so I opened it and cut the tube off. I had to cut the nipple to fit but I got it to seal in there, and things after this got kinda *funny*.
After spending twenty minutes trying to route the pipe through some suspension parts and up through the back left fenderwell, I got enough downward angles for the fluid to at least travel some on its own. I started feeding in the lucas oil, then I literally put my mouth over the tube and started blowing as hard as I could till I had to take another breath. I did this for a few minutes, then I got underneath to check how much of the oil had gone in. Successfully and crazily enough, my idea worked. The only thing that backfired on me was I guess because I was thinking so fast when I went to check how much fluid had gone in....I had forgotten to take the tube out of my mouth and because of that all the remainder of the oil that was still in the tubing greeted me in my mouth......fyi, brand new gear oil tastes like 1,000 year old rotten Caesar salad dressing.....find a better way to introduce the new oil into the differential than me.
I kept doing the mouth to the feed tube thing for another 20 minutes as I added more oil. I kept trying to add more and more, but I was concerned I might overfill the differential with too much. I couldn't seem to get the thing to the point where it was overflowing out of the fill hole, but I put in my finger a few times and felt around the level....it was pretty darned close to the top. So even in my opinion it was not 100 percent full, it was close enough for me and I was getting really tired...so I called it success and buttoned back everything up!
I drove the car for about 15 minutes around my neighborhood, and man what an improvement! I can't confirm this as I'm not a mechanic, but I swear it seems like the transmission is not shifting nearly as hard and it's revving a little bit lower around town and on the freeway.
This is only part one of a major service overhaul on the drivetrain. Within the next few days I've gotta head down to my nearby dealer and pick up a transmission filter and gasket for the pan (I can't find these locally at places like autozone because they say they can't get those parts, so I'm assuming it's either a specialist shop or the dealer only???). Then I'm going to attack the oil pan gasket and replace that too, along with getting some genuine Mercedes Benz Radiator coolant. I wanted to use something else, but I've really been told by people like Christopher and others that I really have to run official Mercedes coolant. I haven't serviced my radiator before, but I did add some peak 50/50 coolant when I got it as it was low. To me 45 dollars a bottle for coolant is silly, but if people tell me on here I need to run it I will.
P.S. After that *fun* experience with tasting gear oil, I had to wash my mouth out four times with some hardcore mouthwash and even after that I can still taste the oil in my mouth, haha....
Fun day.