BMW serviced my transmission without dropping the pan. Huh?

[Dan in NZ]

I noticed my invoice didn't have a filter on it, so I talked to the tech and they use a machine that connects to the cooler lines and flushes out the complete volume of fluid. What about the dirty old filter? And the little magnets in the pan? Surely a BMW service center would do the job properly and do those thingst too. What is the official procedure?

If you get problems from a blocked filter, then leaving the old one in there with new fluid can't help anything. And the build-up on the magnets must break free eventually if you hit a pothole or something.

Dan

[Derek A.]

I belive it boils down to $$$.

The dealer can charge you for a transmission service that only takes the tech 5 minutes to do. While they are not making money on parts they are probbaly soaking you $100 for the trans service. Changing the fluid is better than nothing, but I would have done the filter as well.

[Bill R.]

fee schedules, one where they drop the pan change the filter,clean the magnets and the pan then bolt it back on and hook it up to the flush machine which then flushes and changes all the fluid and the other procedure which hooks up to the lines and changes and flushes the fluid.
Guess which procedure most people are willing to pay for?

I noticed my invoice didn't have a filter on it, so I talked to the tech and they use a machine that connects to the cooler lines and flushes out the complete volume of fluid. What about the dirty old filter? And the little magnets in the pan? Surely a BMW service center would do the job properly and do those thingst too. What is the official procedure?

If you get problems from a blocked filter, then leaving the old one in there with new fluid can't help anything. And the build-up on the magnets must break free eventually if you hit a pothole or something.

Dan

[Hector]

and cleaned the magent too. When I did mine, I cleaned the tranny pan as well. There was a lot of crud/metal filings on them. I kinda remember I had a hard time (didn't have right tools) removing the tranny pan bolts or filter bolts--believe one of the other were torx type--wound up finish stripping (think it began during last tranny service by someone) one of the threaded holes on tranny housing so had to re-tap the hole with slightly larger DIA. Aside from my little problem, in general the job is easy to do.

In my opinion, I can't see the permanent magnet moving around upon some sort of vibration as the magnet is typically pretty strong. The tranny fluid would have to be so filthy beyond color recognition, and the filter in pretty bad shape for both to affect the magnet in some form or other--to a point of demagnetization--for the case of high fluid temps. And even so, the Curie temp for most permanent magnets is pretty high in the 300 C range, the fuild would have to be pretty hot though, which is unlikely.

[Tiger]

Mmm... yep, you still need the filter changed...

[Dan in NZ]

The price was fairly steep without a new filter, so I don't know if I want to go back and pay more $$$ for the filter too. I just asked for a trans service and assumed that would include the filter change...

[Bill R.]

The price was fairly steep without a new filter, so I don't know if I want to go back and pay more $$$ for the filter too. I just asked for a trans service and assumed that would include the filter change...