Changing Gear Drive oil - sr3

[AlistairCoker]

Me again. Need to change gear drive oil at weekend. I guess it is draned from the lowest plug/pipe on right hand side of gear drive unit (there is a pipe that enters this plug from what I can see) - do I have the correct one ? Also this plug sits higher than the oil cooler itself so do i need to disconnect the pipes at the cooler end to drain oil tha maybe sitting in the pipes and/or cooler ? Or does all the oil sit in the drive unit when the car is stationary ?
Cheers
Ali

[DarioT]

AlistairCoker said:

Me again. Need to change gear drive oil at weekend. I guess it is draned from the lowest plug/pipe on right hand side of gear drive unit (there is a pipe that enters this plug from what I can see) - do I have the correct one ? Also this plug sits higher than the oil cooler itself so do i need to disconnect the pipes at the cooler end to drain oil tha maybe sitting in the pipes and/or cooler ? Or does all the oil sit in the drive unit when the car is stationary ?
Cheers
Ali

alistair it is the lower pipe spigot that needs removing (pickup pipe to the diff oil pump) pull this hse off and let it all flow out.

word of warning though..... i'm pretty sure i cost my self a diff rebuild by not filling up my diff correctly.

what i do is.

fill the diff to the level (side plug on LHS of diff when viewed from the rear!)

lift the car up and put in on stands and run the engine in gear with the wheels spinning (don't forget this is risky!)

take it up through the gears and make sure you give it a little time to get the oil around teh cooler circuit. when i did this w was unconvinced that any oil was circulating around my cooler so i took off the return pipe from the cooler at the top of the diff amd put a small funnel to catch the oil from the pipe back in to the diff. only when i saw the oil circulating did i then believe that the oil was in all of teh right places. i then stopped the engine and immediatley checked the oil level. at this point i was able to add more oil as oil was now spread around teh system. this causes a amall leak at the diff seals, but its a small price to pay for my peace of mind.

anyway this is the way i do it, other will probable differ!

Dario

[splitpin]

Flippin'eck!

There was me thinking it'd be nice not to have to mess about with all that chain lube palaver on the SR4 with the less flexible but cleaner and maintenance-free drive of the SR3.

All of a sudden, the SR4 arrangements look spot on; flexible, simple and straightforward; wysiwyg

[DarioT]

splitpin said:

Flippin'eck!

There was me thinking it'd be nice not to have to mess about with all that chain lube palaver on the SR4 with the less flexible but cleaner and maintenance-free drive of the SR3.

All of a sudden, the SR4 arrangements look spot on; flexible, simple and straightforward; wysiwyg

its not that much of a faf, but i am extra cautious for good reason.

[AlistairCoker]

After all the advice, (thanks), I drained the gear-drive oil yesterday and only about 700ml came out of the lower plug on the unit. I figured a fair amount must have been left in the cooler so I disconnected the return (or feeder) pipe that goes from the top of the cooler to the top of the drive unit and then disconnected the pipe at the bottom of the cooler. I then blew through the top pipe and the oil flowed easily out of the bottom of the cooler. Even doing this I was only ableto find another 300ml so i only extracted 1 litre in total. Not sure where the other 500ml is/was !!! Anyway I measured exactly what came out and out the same back in so should avoid Dario's problem (thanks for the advice). It started to flow from the left hand plug so I am prettys ure it is ok. Will run it around the paddock at next track day before going out and then check level again. On another note, I also changed the engie oil and after taking both the sump plug and the scavenge tank plug off, I only got about 3.5 litres out !! Where is the other 4 odd litres and how on earth do you get it out !!?
I should have been a mechanic !!

[nick997]

AlistairCoker said:

On another note, I also changed the engie oil and after taking both the sump plug and the scavenge tank plug off, I only got about 3.5 litres out !! Where is the other 4 odd litres and how on earth do you get it out !!?
I should have been a mechanic !!

I had the same problem and concluded the rest must be in the oil cooler. What do others do to ensure that as much oil is changed as possible, drain the cooler as well? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Nick

Edited by nick997 on Sunday 1st March 09:48

[jmcjmc]

Do you have a wet sump or dry sump setup ? if you have a dry sump you need to drain the oil tank, and you should drain the oil cooler to,
Jason

[DarioT]

IIRC a full oil change on my dry sump SR3 1500 is about 6 litres, it does come out aeventually if you keep all of the bungs open for a while.

[AlistairCoker]

I have a dry sump. I didn't drain the oil cooler and having seen where the feeder/return pipes connect to it I am glad I didn't try, looks like they are almost impossible to get to, especially the bottom pipe. Oh well, I managed to get almost 4 clean litres into it in the end, better than nothing I suppose.

[splitpin]

AlistairCoker said:

I have a dry sump. I didn't drain the oil cooler and having seen where the feeder/return pipes connect to it I am glad I didn't try, looks like they are almost impossible to get to, especially the bottom pipe. Oh well, I managed to get almost 4 clean litres into it in the end, better than nothing I suppose.

I too am not into undoing all those oil cooler pipes. My technique is to get the oil upto full operating temperature, maximum scavenged, get the tail up slightly high, then let it out as quick as possible (my asbestos hands probably help) in the order of dry sump tank, sump plug and then oil filter; it rockets out - use a deflector when you release the sump plug, else it'll shoot all over the flange which holds the front edge of the rear diffuser undertray, which takes ages to clean up properly. Then I lower it level and let it drip the remainder out for something like an hour.

Using this technique (and being a bit of an anorak), I measured roughly what I got out, so I knew roughly how much to start putting back in; about 5.5 litres - standard Hayabusa, dry sumped.