On Saturday, Brian and I 'gatecrashed' a Jaguar meet that involved a tour of Mackies , the famed ZF gearbox people.
Amongst loads of interesting equipment, demos and talks, we came across the legendary sucky,squirty, pumpy thingy that is used for flushing the gearbox on a service.
I learned a few things about this that I didn't know before:
1. It heats the transmission fluid to over 100C whilst it flushes it through
2. It's particularly important to get the cooler flushed through as this is where many of the fine particles can collect
3. The machine has its own very fine filter (much finer than the gearbox filter) and they can diagnose many faults just from the tiny particles that collect in this filter (e.g. brass particles suggest probable bearing wear)
Photos from the tour can be found here:
http://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/uk...-111085/page6/
Many thanks to Jim from the Jag Forum for organising this and asking us along.
And one last point - John Mackie was kind enough to promise a voucher for a free gearbox service for a prize at the June Meet!
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2002 Final Edition S8. Ebony black with Silver Grey leather and myrtle wood trim.
Current mods: solar sun roof, 20mm rear spacers, 15 mm on front, red brembo callipers, 6k headlights, rear view camera, engine remap, alloy dash dial rings, alloy navi rings, tt/phaeton pedal upgrade, (and custom matching foot rest) dension ipod interface & parrot hands free kit (both fully hidden), av input, tv in motion switched thro' PF switch in blanking plug right of steering column, Audi 'quattro' sill covers, repositioned centre console switches, radio clock, .
Planned mods: auto-dimming rear view mirror, dash cam (as steamship's), fit the ski hatch, refit philips drl's (or maybe not - nope, definitely not - horrible botch!).