TRANSFER BOX

1 Here’s the transfer box which takes drive from the transverse gearbox and sends it backwards via the propshaft. It’s squeezed into the front- drive Ford platform and its small size means it takes just 400ml of fluid. 2 Jaguar designed it as a ‘sealed for life’ unit so there’s a fill plug but no drain. Removing the fill plug and sticking a finger inside revealed the oil to be well below the level and the magnetic plug also held enough metal particles to make it worth changing the oil as a preventative measure. 3 Since the unit has no drain plug, Jaguar’s official procedure is to empty it by removing the propshaft and rear pinion seal. Few owners will want to do that so we took the car to our favourite local workshop, ACG in Cheltenham where they were up for the challenge of investigating alternatives, starting with this workshop pump which is usually used for engine oil changes. 4 The design of the transfer box makes it tricky to get the suction tube inside far enough, so we changed to this air- driven pump which uses a smaller suction tube. 5 This worked and we could feel the warmth of the fluid being sucked out but it was a really slow process and boss Ash wasn’t convinced we were able to get the suction tube far enough into the unit. 6 The solution was a simple one. Using the workshop lift we carefully raised one side of the car and basically tipped the oil out. 7 Here’s what we drained out: contrast the colour of the old oil with the splash of fresh fluid and you can see it was clearly overdue a change. 8 Jaguar doesn’t give a specification for the transfer box oil which means regular parts factors don’t have a listing for the car, so we ordered a bottle from our local Jaguar dealer at a hefty £26.52 for a litre. 9 When it arrived it turned out to be just a regular bottle of 75W140 oil with a Jaguar sticker on it... an oil which a local factor keeps in stock for just £15. 10 Refilling the transfer box is the usual task of using the spout on the bottle to squeeze the fluid through the fill plug. Jaguar suggests raising the nearside of the car so that the sill is half a metre off the ground but we found we could get sufficient in without doing this.