Elgrand E52 CVT Service (Week 1)

Welcome to week one of my CVT service, if you haven't read the intro then I would recommend you take a look at that first.

After reading a lot of Facebook and forum posts I am starting a 3 week process to fully service Elsie's CVT gearbox.  The E52 community recommend draining and refilling a number of times to flush all of the old fluid from the box, so this week it is only about a drain and refill.  Having never done it before I am hoping it will be an easy thing to do...

The first issue for any of you who like me have the Rider model is that its quite difficult to jack up the car at the front, due to the front bumper lip being very low to the ground.  There is a plastic cover under the front of the car that is held in place by a number of press studs, so I removed the studs and the cover so that I could find a jacking point.  WARNING the studs break and so you might want to purchase some on eBay / Ali Express before starting this job.

I previously purchased a low profile jack and used that to raise the car a few inches, before putting in place a more substantial jack to lift the car higher so that I could see what I was doing.  There is a substantial chassis cross member that can be used to jack on.


The gearbox is the unit on the passenger side of the car with the ridges on the casing.  It has a drain plug to seal the unit and this is where I drained the fluid from.  You will need a 10mm allen head to remove the plug.  You can see the underside of the gearbox along with a closer pic of the plug that you will need to remove below.



I placed a bowl under the plug to catch the fluid before removing it, do be aware that you have to unscrew the plug quite a long way for the fluid to begin draining out.  It took 10-15 minutes for the fluid to drain and stop flowing, reducing to drips, at which point I reinserted the drain plug and secured tightly.  The fluid from my car was very dark in colour.


I have read that you should expect around 4.2 litres of fluid to drain out. To ensure I didn't under or over fill my CVT, I measured the drained fluid from my car and it was pretty close at approx 4.1 litres.  Before filling up the gearbox I dropped the car down from the jack so that it was on level ground.  I then proceeded to put 4.1 litres back into the CVT gearbox.  You refill the CVT box through the tube that houses the dipstick, so you will need to remove that first (simply pushing the black tab and lift it out).  The hole is quite small so you will need to find a funnel that will fit.


Once I had refilled the gearbox I then put the dipstick in ready to run the fluid through the gearing.  With the parking brake on and the brakes pressed you can start the car up.  Keeping the brakes on, you will need to spend 2 minutes moving between Drive and Reverse spending 10 seconds in each.  I.e Drive, 10 seconds, Reverse, 10 seconds, Drive, and so on.  After the 2 minutes I stopped the engine.

To put my own mind at rest, I left the car a few hours and then drove it for around 10 minutes to warm the CVT fluid up.  Then I stopped the car to check the CVT dipstick.  Mine was showing exactly the right area on the dipstick so all good.

So thats my first CVT drain and refill completed and it wasn't that difficult really.  I think week 2 might be a bit quicker for me, ready for a more indepth job in week 3.  See you next week!

CVT Service - Intro

CVT Service - Week 2

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