Mechatronic Sealing Sleeve - Help

[kuhllax24]

Hi guys,


I'm at a lost and am about to throw in the towel, but thought I'd ask the forum here first before going to an indy who will be pissed cleaning up my screw up.



Got a 2013 X5 35i with about 67K miles. 8speed transmission. Pursuant to advice I've found here and elsewhere it is recommended to replace the tranny fluid and pan around this time. Also common sense to replace at the same time the mechatronic sealing sleeve. I followed this guy's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCvmdo1bLLw&t=1638s for the most part.



So, after much labor I was able to get out the old transmission pan and put in the new one. But I couldn't find the sealing sleeve to save the life of me. So, I just decide to fill up the pan with the new ZF fluid since I didn't think the sleeve was leaking.


Fill up the pan to full, turn on the car, go through the gear sequence, have it warm up to recommended temperature (all of this is guided via the Foxwell 510 by the way, amazing tool), then go underneath the car again to put in the remaining fluid. When I get underneath there I see tranny fluid dripping from somewhere. Turns out it's coming from electric cable going into the mechatronic sealing sleeve. So, I found the sleeve (right above the fill hole), and it's clear that the o-ring is kaput. Sleeve needs to be changed out. Thankfully I have the part.



So, I drain the $60 worth of fluid knowing that I have to take off the pan in order to access the sleeve. But I instantly run into two issues: 1) I can't for the life of me rotate the electric-cable collar off of the mechatronic sleeve; 2) every video/photo I've seen shows a white locking tab on the mechatronic unit that you need to pull down to release the sleeve. My transmission has no white tab whatsoever. Regarding the former issue the collar has a few chunks of plastic missing now from my screw driver when I was pressing on it to rotate.



My main questions are:



1) what am I doing wrong? Is there some reason why the electrical-wire collar won't come off the sleeve?

2) And why does this white tab not exist anywhere to pull on in the unit itself? I was thinking of pulling off the actual mechatronic unit to tackle the sleeve, but I'm just a novice when it comes to this stuff, and pulling this unit off seems out of my league.



I appreciate any insight and will post any photos that you guys want to see. I'm most fearful of the electric collar that is missing some chunks of plastic that looks really tough to replace.