Yet another simple question as I complete the 60k service little by little. I saw a post recently about doing the tranny fluid and how to refill it, easy enough. Question is, I saw a post mentioning concerns of OVERfilling the transmission pan...is this possible? Based onthe procedure, it seems highly unlikely or even impossible to do this and cause harm, let me know if I'm missing something.

 

You can overfill of course. I don't remember how many quarts it takes but start out with putting in a few and run it through all the gears, then at idle in neutral check your stick. Remember your torque converter is still full and the capacity of fluid shown in the owners manual accounts for everything. (You only drained a portion of fluid). Worst case if you overfill just remove the plug. No big deal.

 

Unfortunately there's no dipstick for tranny on the late models, lucky for you I'm guessing that the 98 does. That makes it easy enough. Stupid that they removed it, apparently this change came about thanks to BMW. I'm just watching for fluid to come pouring out after going throught the gears and topping off.

 

On a D2, there is no way to overfill your tranny unless you lower the front end of your truck by a foot or two. As long as you are level, any excess will flow out the fill plug. Make sure though that when changing your fluid, since a filter is not needed, that you fill the pan thru the fill plug, reinstall the plug, start the engine, shift from drive to reverse two time then back to park. leave the engine running and recheck and add as necessary one mor etime and you are done.

 

No dipstick! That's outrageous!

 

No, you can thank BMW for that little contribution, tranny is great, checking it is the pits.

 

If you think no trans stick is bad then I won't tell you most
BMW and Mercedes have no motor oil sticks, you check
it witha sensor that read outs on the dash.

 

I probably made that comment somewhere because I didn't know if you were supposed to check the fluid when warm or cold. ATF fluid expands quite a bit when heated up and on a lot of trannies you are supposed to check the fluid when it is at operating temp. (some are very sensitive to the fluid leve). So... if you fill it to the correct level when cold, by the time it heats up it will be over the correct level. I thought not having a dipstick was goofy, but it makes it much easier to put the right amount of fluid in. Anyways, check it when 'cold' because that's what Mike says and it says nothing about the fluid being warm in the service manual.