Just had our MINI serviced last weekend.

The message from the dealership has now changed -- "Lifetime" means 80k miles. They now recommend a pan drop, filter change and refill on the auto transmission at 80K miles.

They also carry the fluid in 1qt/liter bottles now -- JWS3309 for my car (2012 hardtop with the Aisin-Warner transmission).

MINI Genuine JWS3309 sells for over $20/qt ... however Aisin JWS3309 sells for under $8/qt, and Mobil makes a JWS3309 for around $6/qt.

Since the filter in the pan is a metal mesh strainer filter, it really doesn't have to be changed that often. Our car is at 45k mi now so I am planning to do just a drain-and-fill for the time being, then do the pan drop at 80k.

I can find the drain plug crush washer, and know about the tiny torx bolt filler hole. I also know that the pan drain hole may have a filter of it's own around the drain opening, and i also know that this is one of those trannies for which the correct filling procedures is to pump fluid in from the drain hole, and there would be a level tube insert going up in the hole.

I would like to simply drain out what fluid I can, measure what came out, and refill it back through the top hole, taking care to leave an air gap so it doesn't take forever to fill through that hole, and doing this all while the fluid is a consistent temperature (cold).

Are there any good DIYs out there for this? I haven't been able to find much of anything because the reigning opinion was that since these trannies were considered lifetime, nobody has changed their fluid.

Thanks. John

 

Okay, I found this writeup from Pelican Parts, which looks pretty good:
Pelican Technical Article: MINI Cooper - Automatic Transmission Fluid Change

(Deleted second video ... wrong tranny)

 

Hello John. The video you have posted is for an R53 manual transmission. Glad you found our article. It should be very help to you for the process. If you need the fluid or anything else, we have that for you below. Let me know if you have any questions.

PelicanParts.com - 2012 Mini Cooper Base Hatchback - Transmission & Clutch

 

(Deleted original post .. I had incorrect info here ...)

 

Okay I now understand the basic drain-and-fill process as well as the pan removal process.

One question though — is the final leveling of the fluid done with the engine running or not? The Pelican instructions weren’t clear on this.

Generally auto transmission level checks are done with the engine running ... I assume because running the engine drops the level of the fluid in the pan due to it circulating around in the system, vs when the engine is stopped the fluid collects into the pan, raising the level.

Which means if you were to fill to top of the overflow tube when the engine is turned off, then when you run the engine the fluid level will be below the top of the overflow tube (i.e. low).

Conversely if you were to fill to the top of the overflow tube when the engine is running, that's fine -- however can you do that, or will fluid spurt out of the fill hole?

Please clarify how this works with the MINI.

Thanks. John

 

** Update **

I changed the fluid back in Feb ... just drain-and-fills ... each drain produced right around 2 qts so I ended up doing 3 x 2qt iterations and skipping the overflow tube leveling procedure. Worst case I would be a bit low on fluid, but the tranny isn't slipping at all so I think I'm good.

For the fills I did use the top fill plug ... very slow to fill, as people have mentioned.

-- John