Mercedes 722.9 7G Failure Prevention Part 2: DIY Performance Upgrade Explained

foreign you can see now I've let this thoroughly drain I've cleaned off the edge and let me show you what I'm going to do here so if you bought a kit and you watched a few videos on YouTube and you realize well all you're going to need is a new filter a gasket and this little packet with a new standpipe and new bolts and maybe about five liters of the correct fluid and you're just going to put this back on and complete the process well I'm not going to do that this is not what I'm going to do because I want to extend the life of this transmission and there is an upgrade that you can do which will really add to the longevity and performance of your older 722.9 look what I've done here the filter I pulled out we went ahead and cut it open and if you look at that that's just one media one filter piece that's inside there and this is the original OE filter this is not aftermarket and I believe this is probably not adequate filtration for these transmissions and later on in the life of the 722.9 I think the engineers agreed and they came up with a modification I'm going to take you over to the bench and instead of stalling this right here I'm going to install something completely different the Mercedes 722.9 7-speed automatic transmission had a very long and illustrious lifespan all the way from 2003 almost up to 2016. that's a lot of years a lot of transmissions and during that time it went through two versions kind of like a facelift of a model I'm going to call this the pan lift so you have the early version which was called the 722.9 you have the later version which was called a 722.9 plus so from 2003 up to around 2010 you had this first version and then 2010 all the way almost to 2016 you had the plus version and that was installed in almost every single Mercedes-Benz model so this was a good transmission but it had some problems and I really believe a lot of the problems with these Transmissions are related to fluid contamination and aging so here you see the early version pan and filter assembly and you look over here and this is the pan lift version there's ways you can tell which one you have and I'll explain that in a minute but when you look at these initially yeah there's not a whole lot of difference but if you look at them closely there's some very dramatic changes that they made and the plus version here if you notice both pans have the same design on the circumference sealing lip of the pan so the gasket did not change also the aluminum stretch bolts that have to be replaced when you remove the pan did not change so those are the same but the primary change was in the pan itself notice the difference in height it's not much you can see the bottom and the slopes the same but we're almost 3 8 of an inch higher on this pan lift version or this 722.9 plus version so they went to a deeper pan they also changed the fill pipe this is very important because this will give you an indication of what version you have and what fluid you need to use because the fluids change they've changed dramatically you do not want to cross contaminate the fluids between the early and late version but notice the difference there's a difference in height and a difference in color the green one is used on the later Pan and the white is used on the early pan this is the fill pipe that you put right on here which determines a level and right now I want to dispense with some misinformation that's floating around the internet I can't believe it you know everybody's saying oh they put a big pan on there so they could get more fluid for better cooling that's not the case okay that's not the case if that were true if they intended to get more fluid in this pan then why wasn't this fill pipe here the same height see this comes up above the edge and look at this one this one comes right to the edge so you have a significant difference in the height between these so even though this pan is deeper notice it's not going to get more fluid because that height right there determines the fill level then why did they go with a bigger pan let me tell you and I got this from the factory information along with this height difference between the early and late versions there's also another very significant revision and that's right here and this is the way you can tell whether you have the earlier or later look at these dimples in the early version they're rather small and they only come off the bottom Pan about an eighth of an inch in the later version these dimples are very large so you can see from underneath you can actually look under your car and if you have these great big dimples you know you have the plus version or the later version and if you look underneath the car and you see these very small dimples you know that you have the early version which of course takes a different type of fluid and we'll get into that a little bit later so you're looking at these two pans of course we already talked about the fill pipe but you're looking at these two pans and it if you have an inquisitive mind you're going to say well why did they do this why did they raise these dimples up in the later version I can just imagine what was going through the minds of the engineers you know when they decided we needed to make a revision upgrade on these Transmissions because the failures we're experiencing with these had to do primarily with fluid flow and fluid contamination so follow along as I explain why they raised these dimples right here and in order for me to show that I have to bring out the filters because there was a significant change in the filter design all right so here is the early version filter and here is the late version filter like that all right I'm going to turn them on the sides and if you look closely look at that there's a difference in thickness so I think the engineer said we need better filtration and sure enough they came up with better filtration and this later version uses what's called I think you can read that there it's called the smart media triple filter meaning this has three different layers of filtration whereas this early filter if it only had just one layer of filtration in it so that in itself is a huge huge change they said okay we're going to get better filtration here so I recommend if you're going to do this upgrade or if you're going to replace the filter on your 722.9 plus transmission that you only buy genuine Mercedes filter this is very important because I do not believe there are any aftermarket filters out there that have the quality of filtration as does this Mercedes-Benz triple smart media filter now on to why they changed the pan once again all over the Internet everybody's saying hey they put a bigger pan on those Transmissions so you could get more fluid in there you know and then you're going to reduce heat look at the dimples look at the dimples in this new upgrade pan they're larger and deeper than the dimples on the original pan now there's a lot of information floating around the internet about why they put a bigger pan on these 722.9 plus Transmissions and it's not what you think let me explain this was the reason for the pan change the reason they dropped the pan down and gave it more depth was so they could raise the filter up and get it off the bottom of the pan look closely here at version one notice as I drop this right in here notice how close to the bottom of the pan the intake is this is where the pump sucks fluid up in through the valve body notice how close it is so I think they realize it's too close when you get sediment in the pan it starts to obstruct flow now listen closely that's the key word here flow this revision was made on this pan to increase the efficiency of flow not to add more fluid to reduce heat take a look here this has the same type of intake Port but notice how much higher this filter sits off the bottom of the pan I can almost get my fingers underneath there so you're going to get better flow better pull up through the filter with this upgraded pan than you would with the original pan because you look here I I can't even begin to get my fingers under that filter so what I find interesting is that you can take this pan and this filler you can't just put the filter in and you don't want to just put the pan on but you want to do this complete upgrade to your older 722.9 with the deeper pen with the raised dimples and the smart media filter guess what that's what I'm going to do on this E500 and I'm going to increase flow and I'm going to increase filtration so let's make a comparison here there's a drain plug on the new aftermarket pan here is the drain plug on the original now when you see this what do you think when I see this I say to myself I think this manufacturer cares notice right here look who makes that pan along with installing this upgraded pan and filter I'm also going to do a complete fluid flush on this transmission not just a fill but a complete fluid flush through one of the transmission cooler lines now it's important whether you're doing just a fill or a flush on your early 722.9 transmission that you use a correct fluid even if you're installing the newer pan and filter you still have to use the old style fluid which is red in color that's very important if you have a pan with small dimples or you have a white standpipe you use red transmission fluid it's not the old Dexron this is something else I'm using the pitocin brand there's other brands out there but the key designation is 134 ATF 134. we're going to install the filter gasket in the pan and torque everything down that's the same no matter which version you have and then I'm going to get set up to do the flush foreign [Music]

Channel: Mercedessource

Views: 17,992

Keywords: mercedes benz, Mercedes, benz, Kent, bergsma, kent bergsma, DIY, do it yourself, how-to, how to, mercedessource, mercedessource.com, chassis, model, car, automobile, diesel, engine, diesel mercedes, fix, repair, cheap, inexpensive, problem, troubleshoot, troubleshooting, fixing, mercedes diesel, maintenance

Id: ZxBXbE_WQAI

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2023