XR4Ti T9 Fluid Change - Lih-Yen Hsieh contributed this write up on the draining and refilling proceedure for the fluid in the XR4Ti's T9 (most techniques will apply to T9 equipped Scorpios).

Post Date:    Tue, 17 Jul 2001
Subject:      Re: Transmission oil
List:         imon@lists.merkurowners.org




I took this note of transmission fuild drain and fill procedure 
after I did mine recently.

My car is an '88 and has transmission air baffle but other than 
that most of it applies. A recent thread discussed the fluid 
capacity so you may want to follow on that. In my write up I 
think I used what I read from the Shop Manual.


Keywords for searching the IMON Archives:

transmission (tranny) fluid / gear oil, drain, fill, 
technique / procedure


I spent some time to replace the T-9 transmission fluid and 
played with some means to get it out and in. Hope information is 
worth your time if you want to do it your self.

I couldn't get REDLINE MTL 75W/90 (GL-4) semi-synthetic in time 
to do it so settled with Durablend 80W-90 sythetic blend.

Tools:
- 13mm socket
- 10" extension
- 10mm allen wrench,
- Mityvac + brake fluid bleeder
- 5 ft. 3/8" ID clear vinyltubing

Draining:

Driving the car so transmission gets up to working temperature is 
one way to thin up the fluid allowing easier draining of fuild. 
However I didn't do this.

I put front wheels on ramps. My car, an '88, has the tranny air 
baffle (older ones don't). There are two 13-mm bolts attaching 
baffle to case. I used 10" extension bar to access them (contrary 
to the Shop Manual there was no need to touch any other body 
parts.) Baffle then slides out rearward. There are two rubber 
mounting bushing in the forward mounting flange interfacing the 
baffle and the mounting stud. Grab these  when sliding the baffle 
out.

The filler plug is on the driver side. A fairly large metric allen 
wrench (hex key) at 10mm. I used a piece of black pipe to increase 
the leaverage.

I threaded a piece of coat hanger wire with tip 1" slightly bent, 
into 2-ft of 3/8" ID clear vinyl tubing (available at Home Depot.) 
Using a reducer this got connected to 1/8 tubing then to Mityvac. 
The wire is about 1/4" shorter then tubing, to aid sending tubing 
down bottom of case. I used Mityvac with brake bleeder attachment 
to start fluid flowing, then detached the tubing from bleeder 
reservoir, and pulled out the wire, to let siphon work the fluid 
out into a catch pan. This took just a few minutes. At end I use 
Mityvac again to get whatver little remain out, using 1/8 tubing.


Refilling:

I cut the fuild bottle nozzle to ~3/8" openning, pushed one end of 
about 5-ft of clean 3/8" vinyl tubing onto the nozzle very tightly, 
then threaded the other end down from the space in front of the 
driverside firewall. I had a helper holding the bottle, and I got 
under the car, pull tubing almost straight, then cut excess length 
so there was about 3" into the case and the tubing routing is 
fairly straight. I had the helper invert the bottle and wedged it 
securely. I tie corded tubing to nearby parts to keep it from 
flexing. We then slit the bottom of quart bottle to equalize the 
atmospheric pressure, and start using gravity to fill. This took 
less then 5 minutes. We then cut off the bottom of the first bottle 
to make a funnel. I placed a drain pan under the tranny case to catch 
overflow, and poured the second bottle in the funnel. When done, I 
jacked up the front to remove ramps, and lowered the car into 
horizontal position to let excess oil out. Then I jacked it up (and 
supported it) again to put the plug and the baffle back in place. 
There was just a little (a few oz) overflow.

I figure if I worked with warm fluid things will go a bit faster.