destroid67

Hello all
i just bought an 04 CLK320 and i am doing some basic maintenance on it now. I have dealt with the older version of the CLK am familiar with the 3.2 engine but i have an issue. I was looking at the forums and saw that the only way the transmission fluid can be changed is if i drill a hole, tap it, and plug it. Is that the case or is there another way to do it? Also, how many quarts of transmission fluid does it take?

Rudeney

Whoa! Do not drill into the transmission! I suspect what you are reading about is that the torque converter has no drain, and that is the case. However, it's probably not necessary to drain it. The partial fill you get when simply dropping the pan for the filter change should be good enough as long as you do this every 40K miles or so. Remember, this transmission was sold as "sealed for life" so there are likely hundreds of thousands of them driving around with the original fluid. If you want to do a full flush, you can do that without a torque converter drain, but it will require extra fluid (about 12 quarts total):

http://benzbits.com/722_6/TransmissionFlush.pdf

Or just the regular change:

http://benzbits.com/722_6/FluidFilterChange.pdf

mis3

To the OP, I have the same car and I do the pan flush in a regular basis (every 35k-40k miles).

When they changed the ATF from 236.10 to 236.14, I actually did the pan flush twice in 5k miles interval in order to push in more new ATF. If you are not sure that your previous owner did any transmission service, you should consider at least a pan flush.

I actually wanted to do a full flush at the time but I could not find any indie locally to do it. I even asked 2 dealerships but they said no!

johny1989

mine never changed any of these 250 000 km on it.

the mechanic said if the torque fluid is bad he will change it too. i am sure though i will change all of the oil.

is there any chance i notice any improvement afterwards?

destroid67

Okay thanks i thought it sounded odd about doing a full flush. I have 126k on it and i know he the previous owner (original owner) didn't do any changes at all so i am going to do a pan flush then probably a full flush later down the road. How are you supposed to know if the fluid in the torque converter has gone bad if it is a sealed system short of having the entire transmission kick out?

mis3

I sure did. After the pan flush, the car shifted even smoother. Unfortunately, it did not improve the manual shifting; still slow as molasses.

It has been only 24k miles since my last pan flush. I kinda of looking forward to it!

Rudeney

The fluid in the torque converter is the same as what is in the transmission, so when you change the 4 quarts that drain out of the pan, that new fluid will mix with the 5-6 quarts that remain inside the system.