Ok all, Its about time I contribute to this forum. I have referred to it enough to put in my help. I realize that Porsche does not recommend the changing of these oils for many miles. However, after a recent visit to a speed shop, I was lectured about how bad it was to run these oils after brake in. Weather you agree or not, I figured it was cheep insurance to change them. So I started with the transmission oil. Pretty straight forward, remove the bottom rear cover first. The drain plugs use a standard hex wrench.


Make sure you can get the fill plug loose before draining the oil. I kept the fill plug in place making such that the oil does not flow out too fast. I'm not sure if it makes a difference weather the oil is warm or not, but it can't heart. It takes 3 quarts of oil to fill, so after its drained, replace the crush washer with a new one.

I used the OEM oil which I purchased from the local P dealer. It was not too much more pricey that going on line. Anyway, this is the stuff.







Pump it in from the fill plug until it flows out. Make sure the car is as level as possible. Mine was exactly 3 bottles.
Replace the fill plug and snug. I'm not sure what the torque is for the two plugs, but I just snug them up.


The front diff is a bit of a pain, but not too bad. Uses the same oil, just over two bottles required. There is a front and mid compartment that contains oil. The front contains the gears and bearings, the rear is a wet clutch.

To began, removing the front bottom cover.


Remove all the screws and than 4 nuts on the forward part of the mid cover



once these are out, pull down the mid cover exposing the rear cover, now pull down the front cover from the protruding bolt and slid it towards the rear of the car as much as possible.




Now you can pull down the forward part of the cover until the clips pop out from their slot.




at this point the forward cover should be free exposing your front diff. Again, make sure you can get the fill bolt free before draining the oil. The forward one will be the most easy to access.



Both the fill and drain were marked with a bit of green paint

Both these bolts had not been removed since new and were very tight. Neither use crush washers. This is the drain plug from by front diff, not too bad I guess.




With the car level, fill until flowing out the fill plug, than replace and tighten. The rear clutch compartment drain plug is a bit more difficult to get too.



The fill plug is tucked up in a rather tight spot. I used a swivel head ratchet to get to it.




If you cant get this one loose, I would not worry about it. My oil came out clean as a whistle. The front one was much worse. No crush washers on these either and were very tight from the factory.

Hope this is some help for those wishing to change their own gear oil. I purchased 6 bottles of oil and the washers all for about $80. I'm sure a bit cheaper than the dealer none the less.

 

How about the "all-wheel drive controller"? Did you replace the oil in that as well? This is an excellent write up by the way. I am preparing to tackle this job as well.

 

I just spent $1k at dealer for front and rear diffs, transmission and "awd controller".


My car has 69k miles and let me tell you....ride is smooth as silk and shifting is like a hot knife through butter....even at 1 degree weather morning startups. It was horrible until warmed before the fluid change.

 

The front diff has two compartments, sone say the fluid is shared, I believe they are totally separate. I say this because the forward compartment fluid came out dark and nasty looking with a fare amount of metal on the drain magnet. The rear compartment was just like new with no sign of any metal on the plug. A post on this maintenance on the 997.1 referenced a photo cutaway showing the two compartments and referred to the aft on as a "wet clutch" housing. Either way, they both use the same 75w90 oil so, when doing one, might as well do the other. Use the money saved by doing the work yourself for tires I agree with the other post also, does seam to shift better. Cheers

 

One other piece of advice, get the car as high off the ground tou are comfortable with and can make level. It was a bit snug working under mine because it was not very high up and I was quite sore the next day......

 

I did some research and the front diff and AWD controller call for different fluid part numbers from porsche. That leads me to believe that you can't/shouldn't put 75w-90 gear oil in the awd controller

 

Checked with my dealership and they said gear oil. Do you have the part number? Any info will be greatly appreciated, don't want a failed diff.

 

great, informative post!

 

Awd controller : 000 043 303 00

Diff's : 276 043 204 20

At least that is what I have found so far. I have had a tough time finding a cross reference to understand the difference, however.

 

Thanks for posting those numbers for the different oils. I have forwarded them to my Porsche connection, and will let you know what they say. I thought they might be different, but the fluid that came out looked and felt, even smelled like the gear oil, or at least very close. Thanks again....

 

No problem! Let me know what you find out. Hopefully the only difference is something simple like a moly additive for the clutch packs.

 

strange, i've always heard of people using same Delvac for both diff compartments. i tried doing a quick search for this number you posted ( 27604320420 ) and nothing came up in PET or Google.

i just did a search in pet and it comes up with two different fluids for the front drive campartments...

00004320420 TRANSMISSION OIL FRONT-AXLE DRIVE FINAL DRIVE MOBILUBE PTX 75W90
00004330300 TRANSMISSION OIL FOR CLUTCH 1 LITER CONTAINER

 

That is odd. Any idea what that second P/N actually is? Obviously the first one is just 75W-90 gear oil

 

thats correct the first number is just regular 75w90 synthetic they use for the tranny. in PET it actually refers you to the manual tranny diagram for the fluid.

that second part number 00004330300 comes up as TRANS OIL,FRONT-AXLE in PET

this is interesting.

 

Is there any difference in the center clutch pack between the .1 and .2 ? I assume they would both call for the same fluid?