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So I finally got around to doing my DSG oil change today
It's all very straight forward indeed - just takes a little time and a bit of patience
(I'm going to do these changes at ~40k rather than 60k)
You can buy the filter (comes with the O-Ring) from your dealer parts department or ECS Tuning, etc
I bought the oil from Melbourne - here:
Buy*Pentosin**PX FFL-2*Online Melbourne Australia
I used this excellent page as a guide
How to DIY DSG transmission fluid change on VW TDI or Audi TDI
There are two key decisions you need to make:
Where to pour the oil into the gearbox (top or bottom)
If you refill via the bottom drain plug you are going to waste some (very expensive) oil for sure
And it's a little tricky - you need an adapter and air pressure etc
So I decided to fill from the top via the oil filter hole - the only downside of this is that it's slow
The MyTurboDiesel web site said it would take ~40 minutes to poor the oil into the gearbox this way
(because the top oil hole in the gearbox is so small and the oil is so thick)
I left the oil bottles in a cool place for a few days to ensure the oil was cool/thin (it gets thick when hot)
I used 10mm clear tube (from Bunnings) and a funnel
(I did have to cut the tube to make a small taper so it would fit into the gearbox hole)
If you just pour oil into the funnel you get an air bubble in the tubing going down to the gearbox
This significantly limits throughput as oils drains very slowly past the air bubble
At the start of each oil bottle, if you slowly pour oil into the funnel and let the tube fill with oil (does not take long and does not take a lot of oil to perform this step) you can prevent a air bubble from being trapped in the tube, the oil then goes into the gearbox much faster! (Maybe ~20 minutes all up)
How to determine how much oil to pour back in
The factory fill method is over fill, then start the engine and warm the gearbox oil to 35 degrees
Then let the excess drain out via the drain plug (an inner/vertical funnel maintains the correct level)
To do this procedure you need the car raised off the ground (for the drain pan and so you can put the drain plug back in) and the car must be level (that's important) and you need the VAG cable and software to watch the gearbox oil temperature
The other method is to accurately measure how much comes out and put that amount back into the gearbox (plus 100ml to account for what is lost in changing the oil filter) - which is what I did
I got ~4.66 litres of out of the gearbox (a little more than expected) - not including the oil lost in replacing the filter
I put back 4.75 litres into the gearbox (to account for the oil lost in changing the oil filter)
Complete
The start-up and test drive was totally uneventful - no detectable change in operation
My DSG is somewhat smoother changing gears than others I've driven - no idea why
(Others dump the clutch abruptly - you can really feel the thump)
It's all very straight forward indeed - just takes a little time and a bit of patience
(I'm going to do these changes at ~40k rather than 60k)
You can buy the filter (comes with the O-Ring) from your dealer parts department or ECS Tuning, etc
I bought the oil from Melbourne - here:
Buy*Pentosin**PX FFL-2*Online Melbourne Australia
I used this excellent page as a guide
How to DIY DSG transmission fluid change on VW TDI or Audi TDI
There are two key decisions you need to make:
- Where to pour the oil into the gearbox (top or bottom)
- How to determine how much oil to pour back in
Where to pour the oil into the gearbox (top or bottom)
If you refill via the bottom drain plug you are going to waste some (very expensive) oil for sure
And it's a little tricky - you need an adapter and air pressure etc
So I decided to fill from the top via the oil filter hole - the only downside of this is that it's slow
The MyTurboDiesel web site said it would take ~40 minutes to poor the oil into the gearbox this way
(because the top oil hole in the gearbox is so small and the oil is so thick)
I left the oil bottles in a cool place for a few days to ensure the oil was cool/thin (it gets thick when hot)
I used 10mm clear tube (from Bunnings) and a funnel
(I did have to cut the tube to make a small taper so it would fit into the gearbox hole)
If you just pour oil into the funnel you get an air bubble in the tubing going down to the gearbox
This significantly limits throughput as oils drains very slowly past the air bubble
At the start of each oil bottle, if you slowly pour oil into the funnel and let the tube fill with oil (does not take long and does not take a lot of oil to perform this step) you can prevent a air bubble from being trapped in the tube, the oil then goes into the gearbox much faster! (Maybe ~20 minutes all up)
How to determine how much oil to pour back in
The factory fill method is over fill, then start the engine and warm the gearbox oil to 35 degrees
Then let the excess drain out via the drain plug (an inner/vertical funnel maintains the correct level)
To do this procedure you need the car raised off the ground (for the drain pan and so you can put the drain plug back in) and the car must be level (that's important) and you need the VAG cable and software to watch the gearbox oil temperature
The other method is to accurately measure how much comes out and put that amount back into the gearbox (plus 100ml to account for what is lost in changing the oil filter) - which is what I did
I got ~4.66 litres of out of the gearbox (a little more than expected) - not including the oil lost in replacing the filter
I put back 4.75 litres into the gearbox (to account for the oil lost in changing the oil filter)
Complete
The start-up and test drive was totally uneventful - no detectable change in operation
My DSG is somewhat smoother changing gears than others I've driven - no idea why
(Others dump the clutch abruptly - you can really feel the thump)
- Anyone else got a theory on this?
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