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Well, as you may know I'm fairly new to the W211 area with my recently acquired 2007 E350 that had only 32k miles on it at 8 years old. I'm changing all the fluids now, and today's job is the transmission.
In reading the various posts on the overall forum I wasn't clear on what size socket I'd need to turn the crank pulley and in so doing find the drain plug on the torque converter. One guy with an AMG model had a 33mm pulley nut, and in another post a guy with a C300 said his was something like 24mm. I thought I'd report here that on my 2007 E class 350 the crankshaft pulley takes a 27mm socket. That one socket was six bucks or so at the parts store, vs buying a set of jumbo metrics for $50 or more. Instead of buying a half inch breaker bar I picked up a length of galvanized pipe at Home Depot to slip over my ratchet handle. I'll report how that works.
Now, as to what sort of apparatus for refilling, here's what I've put together:
I had read in another post that someone had success using a Motive brake bleeder, so I unscrewed the tube leading to the brake reservoir cap, which left me with a hose and a fitting (circled in red). The question then was what diameter is that fitting and what diameter tube should I use? Here's the answer for my Motive brake bleeder: it's a 1/4" threaded fitting, which means 1/4" hose as well.
For the apparatus shown above, I have a threaded nipple (which I enjoy saying, by the way) leading to a shutoff valve with a lever. On the other side of that is a 1/4" male threaded barbed fitting mating to a length of 1/4" clear tubing. On the far end is a female threaded barbed connector that screws onto the Mityvac 722.9 refill adapter that I picked up from ToolSource.com on the recommendation of another forum member's post.
Altogether this setup cost about $35 or so, with the various hose adapters/fittings from Home Depot plumbing area and the tool from the website above. The pump ought to be cheap; you can use a garden sprayer or anything really. I just happened to have this Power Bleeder already, so I'm using it for this job.
I'm going to do the service today and will report back on how well it went. Wish me luck! Hope this info is helpful to the next guy who goes looking for specifics.
Looks much better than my setup did lol I would recommend flushing some fluid through it before putting it on car as you don't' want Teflon tape or other crap getting into the system. I put about 1 1/2 quarts through mine just to be safe.
Okay, so a report on how that refill device worked might be in order. Worked great, and FAST refilling.
Unfortunately, I had problems on other fronts. First of all, my 07 E350 did NOT have a torque converter drain plug, despite the Mercedes EPC showing that it did. My poor wife gave the engine two complete revolutions with a length of pipe on my ratchet handle while I looked from underneath and no dice.
I also ran into a problem with a plate on the right front (passenger's side) of the transmission oil pan. The sprag for that corner is attached to the plate, pictured here:
This plate, as it turns out, is held tight against the transmission housing by another smaller plate overlapping it from above. It doesn't matter if you take out the bolt through the sprag; that corner of the pan is NOT coming out unless you loosen the upper overlapping plate. Once you do that it comes out FAST. Don't ask me how I know.
Think these were my only problems? Not hardly. I also had a new inch-lbs torque wrench, and when I went to tighten the first bolt I was listening for a *click* that I never heard, despite turning very slowly. That led to me overtorquing it. On the subsequent bolts I felt it give way very subtly, which made me worry that I'd overdone the first one. I then went to loosen it and SNAP.
That was Saturday evening, so I had a chance to look into my options for removing the broken bolt. This morning (Sunday) I headed for Lowes and picked up this broken bolt removal kit:
Fortunately it worked great. I used the second smallest size, thinking that the next larger option could be a backup. Came out on the first try though:
The question then was, since I didn't have backup aluminum bolts, what would I put back in? Being Sunday morning, and with things to do on Monday I didn't have the option of heading to the dealer. So, I put in a bolt that I had left over from one of my 722.6 transmission jobs on my last car. It's 10mm shorter, and it's not aluminum (stainless?), so it could be prone to galvanic corrosion. On the other hand, since I wasn't prepared to do a tranmission flush I figured I'd be back in 10,000 miles or so anyway so what the hell.
Other than those issues, the job was okay. Radiator attachments for transmission lines are very different than they were for my five speed, so now I need to figure out which one is incoming and which is outgoing so as to properly flush in my next services.
So, to sum up, not all 07 w211s will have drain plugs on the TC, there's a weird overlapping plate that needs to be loosened to drop the pan, and if a pan bolt breaks it's actually a pretty easy problem to fix. Hope that info helps someone else.
Thanks for the detailed write-up this is one of those DIY's that scare me for some reason. I'm going to see what my local indie shop is going to charge if I think its to much I'll be on the floor of the garage next week. I also have an 07 E350 with 88K.
Glad it went decently well and I had the same thing happen with a torque wrench thats when i threw them all away and bought new very good ones.
I would check again for the drain plug as it is so easy to miss It took me 15 minutes of looking to finally spot it as I thought I read all 722.9 had them.
Glad it went decently well and I had the same thing happen with a torque wrench thats when i threw them all away and bought new very good ones.
I would check again for the drain plug as it is so easy to miss It took me 15 minutes of looking to finally spot it as I thought I read all 722.9 had them.
Thanks. Yeah, I'm questioning myself since I saw someone else who said he had a 722902xxxetc transmission WITH a drain plug, and mine is 722906xxxetc. You'd think that a later transmission would have one as well. I would have sworn it wasn't there, but I AM going to check again next time. Probably at a half service interval, or 15k miles or so.
Jeez, I thought I DID buy a good torque wrench, but maybe not so much. That 4nm torque value is pretty damn low if you ask me.
One thing I always due when setting a torque is use a high torque bolt such as a lug nut (assuming the torque I set is less that the lug nuts torque) as a test to make sure it clicks and I know what it feels like that way I don't break anything. Did it once and that was enough to teach me a very good lesson.
As for finding the bolt it is at a strange angle and not straight in and also make sure you have a good light and have your helper turn the engine very slowly as you can miss it so quick.
Last edited by samaritrey; 04-22-2015 at 04:38 AM.
This weekend I'm doing my transmission service again (at 75k miles now). This time around I bought the kit that included pan gasket, filter, plugs/seals, and screws. Pan is back on with no problems.
Of note, however, is that I am an idiot. This time around I DID find the drain screw for the torque converter. It came out and went back in easily with one of those jack knife style sets of hex drivers.
So much for my insistence that the torque converter drain screw was NOT there.
04-18-2015, 10:11 AM
