bmwm750

FINALLY got a straight answer from a dealer tech who seemed to actually know what he was talking about, who confirmed my hunch to just call well enough alone.

That said, cheers to a hopefully uneventful ~40k miles of further transmission peacefulness.

volvopentaman

To mess up an old thread a bit, i checked my W12 fluids (a small leak, a drop now and then). The fluid was definetly not yellow/gold, nor green or blue. Or if it was even near those colors, i'm 100% colorblind. The fluid was brown, like 50.000km driven normal red ATF.

The car has always been serviced at the same audi dealer it was bought new, and only 1 owner before me. 241.000km on the clock atm. and i've owned it from 203.000.

The gearbox sounds fine, works fine, except when i reset the fault-memory, it's been a bit rough in 2->3 gearchange below 0degrees celsius. But that was just this winter after i reset the fault memory and didn't do a proper drive-in (10 times 0-80km/h slow acceleration and then deceleration without brake).

mishar

Very good reason to change it.

itsasecret

Just an FYI trans fluid tends to turn brown with age. The color does not always indicate an issue

volvopentaman

Yes, i know, that's why i said it looks just like my normal RED ATF (like in my volvo) that has turned brown. But the weird thing was, that it was nothing like it could have been gold/green or blue...

I'm thinking of ordering a 20L can of lifeguard8 through my friend for around 500€, that would be enough for both mine and my friend's 4,0TDI that's also soon in need of new oil, as it's the same color as mine.

mishar

Gold would turn brown just like the red one. Than, it could be changed before. May be for the red one. Anyways those 20 liters are just enough for one W12 gearbox with unidentified ATF in it. You should do it three times in order to get rid of the old fluid to the acceptable percentage. Not sure if it would be right ATF for your friend's car.

volvopentaman

The W12 should have blue stuff, no idea how blue would turn blue. My friend's 4,0TDI oil looked the same color, tough it should probably have the "gold" oil. I'll have a look at the transmission software numbers when i connect my VAS next time.

As i said, my car has always been serviced at the same authorized seller it was bought new by the previous first owner. I doubt they have changed the oil, or at least changed in some unidentified ATF. No work has been carried out to the car outside this dealer.

My friend that services auto transmissions for a big company (including 6HP, 8HP and so on)said the lifeguard8 is good for all ZF6HP transmissions, and i've found out he's right. It is good for transmissions requiring LG6, 6+(W12) and 8.

I don't know why you would flush a 10L transmission with 20L of expensive ATF. I've changed the oil in my volvo S90 (also 10L ATF) 3 times over 200.000km, every time after the 10th bottle, the outcoming oil has been clean. The oil change in these is done by circulating, as i'm intending to do in the audi too by removing the heat exchanger, and first emptying the oil and re-sealing the leaking oil-pan.

I'll probably blow the transmission to a thousand pieces with that. :P

mishar

That is not procedure recommended by Audi but it might work. If you do it their way you can drain only 6 liters. The rest of it is in the converter.