Gearbox/Diff Oil Change

[craigdm]

What is the service intervals on these two, seem to remember the gearbox might be 'sealed for life'???

My 3.0Si is now 8 years old and coming up to 95K miles, and I was hoping some new oil might ease the gear change a bit.

Easy DIY jobs, or expensive indy?

 

[Machine monkey]

The diff and gear box oil are supposed to be life long!!
I changed mine last year and they where both in a right state. I would recommend doing or getting them done. It is a fairly easy DIY job you just need to get the car in the air to get underneath.

My car was 11 years old but 65k miles.

 

[Paulwirral]

Make sure you remove the filler plugs first , nothing like draining the oil then finding out you can't fill it back up

 

[Dewi]

Did mine at 19k miles and even at that mileage the old oil wasn't pretty when it came out so I'd hate to see it after 50 / 60k miles!

BMW have this thing about "filled for life" g/boxes and diffs. The bike is the same with the F/D (final drive) being quoted as filled for life on the earlier models. The oil capacity on the R1200R F/D is 180ml - which is a miniscule amount of oil - so how they came to the conclusion that it would cope for 10s of 1000s of miles is beyond me. As it happened they modified the F/D housing on later models to include a drain plug and a filler after numerous warranty claims within the first 12 months. Thankfully mine has the drain / filler holes. Later they also fitted a F/D casing breather - which should have been included at the initial design stage. I've fitted my own now and the oil gets changed in the F/D every 1000 miles, it takes about 15 mins.