Ford Enthusiast

[veeight]

I went through this same exercise earlier this year (April 2009). The wife's 2005 FreeStyle had around 61k miles on it.

Here are some of my notes:

1. I did not remove the transmission support to change the high pressure filter. The hole in the support will allow a socket extension through, but it is very tight. Getting the filter cover and the actual filter out and back together is another tight challenge with the support in place. Next time, I will remove the support.

2. There are two magnets in the bottom of the transmission pan that should be cleaned. They rest in two shallow pockets and look like thin rectangles. The pan and fluid were very clean in my opinion. No shavings or significant debris of note. The two pan magnets were covered in fine grey shavings of a paste-like consistency. I measured 7 quarts when I drained the CVT. Luckily, I had purchased 10 quarts...

3. The pan filter (low pressure) has a rubber O-ring at the top of the spout that got stuck in the valve body when I pulled it out of the trans. It was easy to fish out with a piece of metal clotheshanger.

4. Be very careful with the pan bolts. I stripped three of them torquing the pan back on. I ended up putting helicoils in the stripped bosses which was fun since the driver's side of the pan is angled away from the ground.

5. The Ford replacement high pressure filter looked a lot cheaper than the factory installed filter it replaced. It has a black plastic body and a white paper element. The factory filter had a metal body with a paper element. There is a bonded rubber/metal stub tube in the high pressure kit that replaces the factory Ford bare metal tube with two O-rings. Therefore, the kit only comes with four small O-rings, not six.

6. I paid around $168 for the 10 quarts of CVT fluid, both filters and a new pan gasket.