Tansmission Oil fill through shifter?

[1983Pinin]

Hello,
Does any have any experience or advice on changing transmission gear oil by filling from the shifter? I was told you can remove shifter boot and shifter and then pour your oil from inside the vehicle after draining? Sounds somewhat easier and cheaper than filling from underneath with a pump.
Anyone done this? Anyone know that you can't do this? I've seen this trick mentioned for other vehicles.
Oh--this is an 83 spider--yes, manual transmission.
Thanks
--Peter

[vandor]

No, not possible. Whoever told you this has never seen a Spider transmission.

[djape1977]

you can fill the gearbox from above if you somehow manage to wiggle the remote shifter off

[Jimb]

I used a piece of hose that i stuffed one end into the side of the gearbox and the other end ran up beside the exhaust manifold. Then used a funnel to pour in the oil. Worked great.
Jim

[kilrwail]

I used a piece of hose that i stuffed one end into the side of the gearbox and the other end ran up beside the exhaust manifold. Then used a funnel to pour in the oil. Worked great.
Jim

I use this method on both cars. It's easy and there's no mess if you place a catch pan below the transmission to pick up the overflow. My hose is about 1/2" in diameter and is clear, so I can monitor the flow.

[4uall]

with my limited space and mostly working solo I use the pump method

sooooooooo took 20 min and did my transmission oil. Thanks to this forum I was able to have all tools & supplies on hand



and remove the correct fill plug first (bottom right 17mm)



I swear the oil that came out was elephant grey



this pump made it sooooo easy



now she shifts super smoothly

[Turbofiat124]

Here is a stand I built to hold a funnel, I use to refill differentials and transmissions. I hate those suction pumps. They are messy, leak, the hose blows off, etc.

[1983Pinin]

Nice solution, Turbofiat.
I ended up buying a nice hand pump-- sorry to say I had back luck with the red plastic pump posted in reply to my query.
Thanks everyone-- having a nice aluminium hand pump around isn't the worst addition to a toolkit...
--Peter

[bluespider262]

Google an outboard motor lower drive pump.

It's a nifty little pump that screws onto the top of you gear oil container and let's you pump the fluid in. It's essentially a large "hand soap" pump with a tube at the end.

Only down side is you have to pump it about 100 times to get the quart in there so your hand gets tired. But it's a cheap, no mess solution for those hard to reach fill holes. Works great for rear diff too.

You could also probably run a tube through one of the floor drain holes in a pinch.

[DieselSpider]

This has been the standard go to tool for filling hard to reach gear boxes for over 100 years. You usually bought one of these at the same time as your grease gun:

[spider2081]

This has been the standard go to tool for filling hard to reach gear boxes for over 100 years. You usually bought one of these at the same time as your grease gun:

I agree these are well worth the money to have in ones tool collection

[lackluv]

What is the size of the Allen Wrench used for the fill up port?

[So Cal Mark]

in the picture shown, the allen is NOT the fill plug. the lower plug with the 17mm hex head is the fill port

[nelsonj]

And remember: ALWAYS remove the fill plug BEFORE removing the drain plug. Why? If you remove the drain plug (and drain all the oil), and then for some reason you cannot remove the fill plug you are stuck with an undriveable car with no way to get oil back into the transmission. (Almost learned this the hard way with my differential....)

[alfadude1]

in the picture shown, the allen is NOT the fill plug. the lower plug with the 17mm hex head is the fill port

I would like to get a new filler plug for my transmission. Does anyone know what the size is and/or a source?