I've been to both MINI of Dallas and Sewell MINI before when I was under the maintenance program and they both would not do a transmission fluid flush. They both claimed the fluid is maintenance free! Ugh, I can't believe this. If it's "maintenance free" then why is my shifter stiffer than normal? It now seizes up slightly when moved from one gear to the next.

Does anyone have a picture tutorial on how to do a transmission fluid flush? How do you pour the new transmission fluid into the case? There's no inlet for it anywhere in the engine bay.

 

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...n-6-speed.html

You can also use the site's search feature, "Automatic transmission fluid change" and you'll find many posts about how to do it yourself.

Dave

 

I am at a dealership, and I would not change it either. The ONLY Times I have had to replace fluid is when doing a repair that lost trans. fluid.

 

I followed the above link (and few others on this forum) to drain/refill 3 quarts (out of 4) of slushbox fluid about a year ago. Car/tranny had 56K miles at the time. There was an appreciable improvement in shifting smoothness, especially during kickdown under load.

Just be careful to collect and measure all old fluid that you drain out (I bought a large open pan just for that reason), and fill her back with identical volume of new OEM fluid. I went with OEM fluid as savings from using Toyota/VW fluid (same spec) wasn't worth the headache for me.

a

 

My dealership quoted $550 to do slushbox fluid drain and refill. Never covered under warranty or regular service, but gladly performed on demand.
Local independent quoted $400 + cost of fluid.

Both were intimately familiar with the service, and performed it numerous times in MINI's.

a

 

There is more than 4 quarts in the system due to torque converter, and each subsequent drain fill will flush out less old fluid due to mixing. 3 back to back drain fills gets most of it out. I also put royal purple back in since oem is not synthetic. Did my first drain flush at 10k miles, prob do the next one after another 12-15k.

 

I have a new dilemma: when poking under the tranny, the evil bean counters at BMW replaced the bolt with a steel plug! How do you remove that? If you do, how does it go back on or do you have to get a new screw-on plug BEFORE doing this? I really am at a loss here.

 

5mm allen wrench. same size for the plastic standpipe after you remove the drain plug. do more research before doing anything else.

 

Number one thing to do before anything else is make sure you can remove the plug on top of the transmission. Its in a tight spot and the first time undoing it is a b!tch.

You don't want to pull out two ltrs of fluid and not be able to replace it.

 

we ground down a big, long slotted screwdriver to fit the T55 fill plug so we can loosen/tighten it with a straight shot where a socket will not fit.