How to drain gearbox oil? Can not locate any draining plug.

And what is exact size of refill plug hexagon, 16 or 17 mm, or should I look for inches?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards, Maris.

I refuse to believe that only way is to remove gearbox and rotate it with fill port down.

How about rear gear switch removal? Is there any springs, pushers, pullers or something else behind switch, that can fall out?

I am not sure which gearboxes are fitted to the 1.4 mpi models. After reading apparently certain gearboxes don't have drain holes. Apparently you're supposed to use an oil suction pump. I can't say how well this does or doesn't work, I'd have thought the tube would end up stuck in the gears somewhere.

Just changed my MPI gearbox oil today.

 

Later MPIs don't have a gearbox drain plug, so what I did was to purschase a cheap oil suction pump off ebay and adapted some windscreen washer pipe to fit the pump (the supplied pipe is too thick and short). Made easy work of sucking out the old oil through the filler hole - I got nearly 2 litres out, which is the correct quantity. Once the oil is out you can then use the same pump to fill the box with new oil. The hexagon filler plug is 17mm and I didn't have a bit that size, but using a longish bolt with a 17mm head and a pipe wrench on the bolt shank got the plug out no bother.

 

Edited 10 April, 201412 yr by TMB

Relevant thread revival!

 

This is on my list when I do the wheel bearing and drive shaft seal at some point, i'm a little surprised they'd do something so monumentally stupid, who do VAG think they are, BMW?! (google X5 gear box issues if you don't get the joke).

 

Joking aside i've never been a fan of extracting fluids via pump despite owning a Pela, my last car had a sealed sump and the crap in the old one when it was dropped to replace it convinced me it needed oil flush or a proper sump, so while gearbox oil is quite different to fully synth'  i'd still prefer a drain plug any day.

Yeah, it's really stupid not having a drain plug. This 'filled for life' business is just nonsense.

 

The main reason I changed the oil is that I've been having trouble with it not wanting to go into first gear at times. I've been out for a long drive in it since changing the oil and it's going into first OK now. The rest of the gears seem a tad smoother to change as well.