Quote:

Several dealers have taken delivery of new vehicles in sept and early oct and there was no oil in either the gearbox and / or diffs. Needless to say there've been some pretty angry new owners with seiezed diffs and gearbox problems.

I thought I would post this, to help others in the same state - planning a oils service...

Engine Oil

Engine oil is easy to do. You'll need 27mm & 13mm sockets, new oil, filter, torque wrench, drain bucket and about half-an-hour.

Get the truck level, and slide in from the front (you do the filter & drain from under), you'll see this:

Click image to enlarge

Oil filter is the dome on the left (passenger side of vehicle), with a 27mm hex on the bottom.
Oil drain is the 13mm obvious drain on the bottom of the sump (top right of photo).

Loosen the filter first (you'll need a long extension bar, as it's well recessed above), let the oil dribble before you remove the plastic dome completely. Then take out the 13mm sump plug, and let the oil sump drain.

When you remove the filter completely, it's a small paper-type element which just fits back into the plastic dome. You get a new O ring with the filter, so change that too.

It holds around 7 litres, so make sure you have something big enough to hold all the old oil...and it DOES come out fast so be prepared. It should be warm, so it drains better.

The oil is Castrol Magnatec 5W-30 A1 Fully Synthetic Engine Oil (Recommended by Ford) - you will need 7 litres. Most buy 2 x 4 Litre cans from Opie Oils.

When refitting, you can re-use the oil drain plug, it has a rubberised washer.

Tightening torques are:
Oil Drain plug: 23nm
Oil Filter housing 25nm

When I put the new filter in, I filled the filter & plastic cup with some new oil first, to make sure the engine got oil as fast as possible when started-up.

I put just over 6 litres of new oil in the normal route, then checked the dipstick, and it was already showing on the dipstick, I put a bit more in, and started the engine, ran it for a minute, and then left it to settle. Once settled for a few mins, I then topped it up to the full mark on the dipstick. That was slightly less than 7 litres.

The Puma has 1 filter, part number LR004459.

Gearbox

Uses 2.2 litres GL4. I used Castrol Syntrans Multivehicle 75W-90 Fully Synthetic MTF (Replaces SMX S 75w-85).

You need a T50 Torx for the fill and drain. Remove filler first just to make sure. A bit of a sod to get at the filler (note not a level plug) plug as you'll see on the photos further down. You'll need a T50 that will actually fit in this clearance...

Once you remove the drain, it empties quite quickly. Worryingly I only got just over 2 litres out of mine, it must have been slightly short on oil. The original fluid also smelled of acetate ...


Refilling is a pain, as the filler is up behind the exhaust and the driveshaft (assuming you have warmed the vehicle, it's likely you'll scald yourself on the exhaust), you'll need some way of getting the new oil in (a pump) I bought a fence-spraying 5litre job from B&Q for about �16:

Click image to enlarge
and attached a metal "hook" into the gearbox:

Click image to enlarge
shown here inserted (you can see how tight the clearances are to get your hand in there):

Click image to enlarge
Once that's all in place, all I had to do was pump 2.2 litres of new oil into the gearbox (a good time to grease the propshafts)

Remember the filler plug is NOT a level plug, you need to measure the oil...2.2 litres for a service change.

Tightening Torques:
Gearbox Drain Plug: 50nm
Gearbox Filler Plug: 35nm

Transfer Box

No Photos here, you need a half-inch square drive for fill and drain plugs. Loosen the filler first - clearance is tight as it's tucked-up 10cm North West of the output shaft and gives an access issue, as it's tight to the handbrake drum.

Drain comes out easy with the half inch drive. This drain plug has a magnet on it (strange the gearbox doesn't).

Using the 1 litre oil bottles the oil comes in, I managed to re-fill without using the pump, just with the bottles.

Refill to the level plug (2.4 litres). I used Fuchs Titan Race SYN 5 75W-90 Fully Synthetic Gear Oil (was Silkolene SYN 5 75w-90) - this one's GL5.

Tightening Torques:
Transfer Box Filler: 30nm
Transfer Box Drain Plug: 30nm.

When I measured the oil taken out, I only measured 2 litres...it must have been a bit short...I'll be keeping an eye on it over coming weeks.

I'll be doing the axles next, but that looks (hopefully) a lot more straightforward... Defender "Puma" 2.4 110 County Utility (possibly the last of the 2.4's)

mermoto wrote:

Nice one Martin - like the idea of using the garden spray to pump the oil in. Where did you get the hook nozzle to fit it?

Mermoto

It's from a Laser Tools 4385 mini-pump.


I had actually used this mini pump to refill the gearbox on my old Discovery TD5...it took AGES! I took the plastic hose and it's bent "hook" off the mini-upmp, and used them to extend the hose on the B&Q sprayer. Worked a treat. I had looked at the Difflock OilSafe which does the same job, but costed £100!

Here's a link to the rather nice OilSafe one at Difflock. Had it been cheaper, I would have bought one...but at £98 it's a bit too much £... http://shop.difflock.com/oilsafe-pump-litre-p-93.html - hence the trip to B&Q earlier this week.

The B&Q pump I loaded with 2.2 litres of oil, and once I'd pumped it about 20 times, it dispensed half the oil (in a couple of mins whilst I got a grease gun onto the prop shafts), and then a few more pumps to re-pressure it and the job was done! Great!

Re the hook - you could probably use a short length of copper microbore from the plumbers merchant... Defender "Puma" 2.4 110 County Utility (possibly the last of the 2.4's)

Lou Sparts wrote:

I don,t know if this would work on a puma but on my TD5 i feed a length of clear plastic pipe down to the gearbox filler plug from under the bonnet poke a small funnel in the end of the pipe and pour the oil in and let gravity do the work. No mess ,minimal expense.