ocles_inc

Today my tech and I made a mistake that ate the transmission oil pan on a ZF 5HP-24A in a 2000 Audi A6 Quattro 4.2 V8.

I'm writing about it in the hope that it will prevent you from having to replace your oil pan after doing a transmission service. In our case, we were doing more than a service -- we had removed, repaired and replaced the transmission, and we were bolting the oil pan back into place.

We didn’t realize that one of the wires inside the transmission was not tucked up behind the tabs in the valve body made specifically for this reason: to keep the wire out of the way. Oops... Here's how it looks when you're doing it wrong:



With the wire hanging loose, it got pinched between the body of the transmission and the oil pan, and it bent the oil pan. We didn’t notice it at first. Everything seemed okay until we’d filled the transmission up with fluid and I shut the engine off. That brings the transmission fluid level in the pan up above the seam where the transmission pan mates to the transmission body.

The leak was apparent right away. After removing the pan, we saw that it was impressively dented:




We pushed the wire to where it belonged: above the two tabs:




So now we get to do it all again, with one less mistake.

If you it's too late for you, and you do need to buy a used oil pan, I do have some for sale.


~Tanya