After 3 years of owning my i30 it's been long overdue for an Auto trans fluid change. I decided to tackle the job this week. Picked up 6 quarts of import ATF and Filter kit with gasket. The job is fairly straight forward and was able to get the fluid drained and pain removed. Problems arose once I got to removing the filter. The filter has 11 bolts total. However one of them is reversed and is held in from the pan side with a 10mm bolt.

You can see the bolt here holding the pan in place.



For whatever reason the bolt was not being held in place from the top. Probably because some dumb mechanic that did the last filter change over tightened the nut causing the bolt to break lose from the top and spin freely. It appears to be impossible to get to the top of the bolt without removing the entire internal components. Luckily I was able to remove the bolt with proper leverage with a screwdriver and changed the filter. Re installing the nut was difficult and I spent a lot of unnecessary time just to remove and re-tighten this one nut.

The real question is, Why in the HELL did Nissan find it necessary to have one of the 11 bolts installed this way? Why couldn't it just be like the other 10 that were threaded and removed from the bottom?

Anyway, job is done now. Just as a tip to anyone planning on doing this job, DO NOT OVER TIGHTEN BOLTS! You'll cause a lot of problems for your next fluid change.

/endrant

 

ive never done this on our cars but its possible its just like that from whoever ****ed it up before?? people do RETARDED things to their cars.

 

besides, the filter is not meant to be replaced...it's a "screen" type, just clean it with brake cleaner and be done.

 

If I recall correctly, there are no nut and bolt combo used on the oil pan. What I theorize is that someone over-torqued the bolt and stripped out that bolt hole, drilled it out and used a nut and bolt.

 

No, it's actually designed that way. It's shown from the picture in the Haynes manual for this car.

 

I'm sure it was a dumba$$ that changed the fluid before. I'm just not understanding why Nissan would design 10 bolts to be normal and have one reversed and bolted in by a nut.

If you have to take it off to clean it, you may as well replace it with a bran new one.

 

My old 5th gen was the same way... what a PITFA to change cause of that one bolt...its no a mecanics fault..my 2000 had the same issue with free spin.... just a ****ty design on nissans behalf.

 

It doesn't surprise me that it was designed like that. Sometimes manufacturers will do things like that to "discourage" do-it-yourselfers and drive business to the dealers. I learned about that when I worked for GM. But maybe there is a valid reason.

 

Good to see this as a heads up because I bought the screen a few weeks ago and was going to find time to get around to this. Hopefully, I don't run into this issue.

 

For your sake I pray you don't. It was really an hours worth of ****ing around for one nut and bolt..

It wouldn't surprise me that Nissan would intentionally do this. I've also heard stories of such things from dealer techs.