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Hey, this is Steve at E36 Fanatics, and today I'm going to show you a really simple, really quick way of doing a power steering flush and refill on a BMW, E36
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Now, this particular car is a 1996-328i, BMW, and it's standard across the E36s though
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So here's what your, the actual reservoir is down here below the air intake box
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So what I'm going to do for this is I'm going to go ahead and remove the air intake box
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I've already unclipped this. and took all of this connection. And then you need a 10 millimeter socket for these two bolts
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here and here around the cruise control. Then this whole thing, a unit just pops out
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Now just a quick thing about this this is the really quick way to do kind of a power steering flush I really need to do it on this car but I don have any jack stands available to me at the moment
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so I'm going to do it this way. If you have some jack stands sitting around that you're not already using them for
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do it the better way and actually jack the car up and do it from underneath
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It's a lot more effective than what I'm about to show you, but this is a lot better running around on dirty fluid
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Okay, so I pulled out the airbox, and you can see the ATF fuel reservoir right here
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And you should be able to just pull it out with your hand, really, be able to turn it out
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And if you can do that, then you can see the meter right here
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and let me just show you how bad my oil is. See that black color
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That is a big no-no for this for ATF oil like this
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It's supposed to be when it's new, it comes out, this reddish color, this clear reddish color
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Also over time as it gets older it not only does it darken up like this but it also gets less translucent You can see through it nearly as well
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And then the other thing is, once it's gotten really bad, you can kind of smell a burning smell
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and that's another sure-fire way to tell that it's time to replace it. Okay
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Okay, so I go ahead and open this up. Set that over there
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So I go ahead and I take a syringe, and remember I only do this if I absolutely have to, really
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If I'm just in a rush and I know this stuff really needs to be changed
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and I take a turkey baster. So I just stick it in there
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I just stick it in there. And out it comes And if it as bad as mine it going to be this nasty black color
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When the newer stuff is supposed to be that pink stain color right there
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So it's definitely well over a time for a change on this stuff
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So, like I said, this is basically the real quick way to do this kind of, this
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job. What I do is I just empty the reservoir of all the fluid into a bin like this or something
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And then once you do that, you go ahead and seal it back up or go ahead and refill it with your new
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ATF fluid. And then you seal it up and then you start the motor and run for about two minutes
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Then you come back and then you repeat the process. So the issue with doing a lot of
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it this way is that the reservoir only carries about a quarter of a quart of
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a ATF oil. So that means you got to do this a few times and run it through to actually
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do it pretty well. But this is definitely the quick version of doing the job, but it's
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much more effective than just leaving it the way it is with bad oil
