Skip to main content

Gearbox Oil Change

Apparently the Porsche 944 has a characteristic whine to the rear mounted gearbox in the transaxle. I've always wondered if an oil change in the gearbox would make a difference to mine. Searching through my service history didn't reveal any receipts for gear box oil changes in the last 10 years - which was quite disturbing.

The chaps at Opie Oils have an extensive range of oils on offer, plus a 10% discount for members of the various forums/clubs on top of their already very good prices, and if you contact them they'll recommend a good oil for your car. I selected a Castrol TAF-X for manual gearboxes and set about getting ready to do the oil change. (This blog post gave me the confidence to do this myself - thanks!)

On the left of the gearbox under the back of the car you'll find two 17mm hex bolts. The top is the filler access and the bottom the drain plug. You don't need to raise the car like I did but it makes access a little easier. As you can see from the above pic I still managed to spill some oil - that stuff shoots out when the drain plug is removed so beware where you position your pan. Before starting the process I took the car for a short drive to warm up the gearbox oil, and I made a mental note of the whiney noise.
To start, I removed the top plug first as recommended by Clark's Garage - if that one won't budge then you'll need to get a garage to remove it and your DIY job will be short lived. Thankfully mine moved after a couple attempts with the breaker bar, and so did the bottom plug. Replace the bottom plug before refilling!

This 944's old gearbox oil certainly looked like Guiness and not the light ale that it was about to be replaced with. There's satisfaction in that already.

To make refilling easier I used a tube that ran from the left NS wheel arch over the exhaust to the filler hole. In retrospect I should have warmed the fresh oil to aid the flow down the tube. Perhaps a tub of hot water for the 1L bottles to stand in would have been a good idea.

After I'd decanted 2L of oil into the gear box I removed the tube to check the oil level before inserting the extended nozzle of the third bottle of oil directly into the filler hole - just to see if it worked - it did, very well. There's enough space between the exhaust and the back of the gearbox for the narrow bottle. It took about another half litre of oil before it started to gently overflow from the filler hole. I then reinserted the top hex bolt. Job done!

Now for the test drive.

It didn't take too long to realise how much of a HUGE difference this new oil had made to my gearbox. The whining was down significantly, it's not gone completely, but it's now not the intrusive and worrying whine it was before. Not by a long shot.

If you haven't done this simple gearbox oil refresh then I can't recommend it enough.
Labels:

Comments

  1. manoj singh11 April 2013 at 12:52

    Here we can get the full knowledge of music player, so before buy any product we should read this blog and thank you for sharing this amazingly knowledge.Gearbox

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown26 May 2014 at 03:58

    Thanks a lot for this post. Good to see an average joe and not a professional mechanic show us it can be done.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Clothing Store25 June 2021 at 14:37

    As long as the oil pressure is greater than the hydrogen gas pressure, a seal will be formed confining the gas. For best synthetic oil you should be updated

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dawood Ibrahim3 January 2022 at 09:02

    Thanks a lot for this post. Great post i Must say. Buy industrial oil suppliers at best prices in Zimbabwe

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Engine out the top - Easy Peasy

After reading numerous posts, the Porsche workshop manual and Clarks Garage step-by-step engine removal guide - I felt confident enough to tackle the job. But I wanted to remove the engine from the top.  As I discovered, it was pretty straight forward even for a novice! Result. I wanted to avoid removing the cross member and disturb the front suspension to do something I was convinced could be done easier from the top. Posts such as this one convinced me to give it a go at least. And I'm glad I did. In summary I was able to remove the engine from the top without needing to remove the bonnet/hood; torque tube; transaxle; bellhousing; clutch; clutch slave cylinder; cross member; front suspension; and radiator. Contrary to many so called internet experts opinions and many confusing threads this was painless and without dread. All that was necessary to remove was the starter; power steering pump and alternator (I figured to make the bottom of the engine narrower); intak...
19 comments
Read more

Bellhousing & Clutch fork removal

Removing the bellhousing from the Porsche 944 engine is not as complicated as it may seem - such as in this situation with my replacement engine. When I removed the original engine I detached it from the bellhousing in the car and removed the clutch pressure plate bolts through the starter motor hole - see my other post for details . In this case I decided to remove the clutch fork pivot shaft bolt. Begin by removing the four 17mm bellhousing bolts - you'll find that the bellhousing doesn't detach completely from the engine. It'll feel like its hooking on something. That something is the clutch fork pivot shaft inside the bellhousing. The bellhousing will be loose enough to rotate - turn it 180 degrees and peek through the access port which is now on top - this is what you'll see: If the engine is still in car you'll be looking at this from underneath. The pivot shaft needs to be extracted from the clutch fork. It's held in place by a small bolt on the...
5 comments
Read more

New Steering shaft bearing Nightmare removal

In my quest to tighten up the handling on the 944, I bought a new Needle Bearing from Porsche in an attempt to eliminate the fore-aft play in the steering at the top universal joint. The part number for the replacement is 477.419.059 and costs £88.86 posted from an OPC. Nothing like the effort required to actually remove the old one... I began the process by reading section 48 of Porsche Workshop manual. It appeared a simple enough process but two things bothered me: firstly, it required a chisel to remove a shear bolt (which in my limited experience never "shear"; and secondly a drill to remove two screws from the ignition lock. I was bothered because a quick look under the dashboard made it quite obvious that whoever had written the manual hadn't performed this task - well not without a dashboard in place that's for sure. I was bothered before I'd even started. Furthermore, the manual doesn't detail the replacement of this bearing at all - just the rem...
3 comments
Read more