Transmission Whine?????

[rlux4]

"special anit-wear aditives"? What do the poor smucks do who don't have our advantage of you and Mark doing the research for us on this?
Ron

[BartusCompater]

I'm gonna jump in here and say that I just changed the oil in my transmission to a GL-1 80. It took about half a gallon of oil (though I spilled quite a bit), before it started to come out of the plug hole consistently.

I did so because I've been hearing the same "whining" from my transmission in 2nd and 3rd gear. After changing the oil, the whining certainly hasn't gone away, and though I haven't had a good drive with it yet, it seemed tougher to shift.

So if this does mean bearing failure, what exactly does that entail? Is my transmission going to explode in the middle of the road in 5 miles or is it just going to be really noisy?

[So Cal Mark]

it will continue to get noisier. The long term effect though is you are continually adding more metal to the oil so the longer you wait to fix it, the more parts you are going to need

[Mathew26]

Hey guys I know I said I would let this die, but.... I did a whole lot more research and called my supplier of GL1. I came upon a couple things that must be shared.

1. motor oils and such have anti-wear additives, and the additves are made of things that attack brass. For those of you that are unaware Fiat synchros are made of brass.
2. Most GL1's are foaming as you need to get into the GL4 and GL5 grades of oil to get the anti-foaming additives.

I know that the post from Pope says with anti-wear, but believe me I would never use that in my car.

[pope]

Mathew, How about you use what you want in your car and leave it at that. Dont confuse the new people here.

[wachuko]

...Dont confuse the new people here.

Too late for that... hahahaha

[manoa matt]

Why there is always a big debate about GL-1 is beyond me. It's not hard to find if you just look, you can get it at any NAPA store. It takes longer to search through the fiatspider.com archives than to search a few local parts stores websites.
The kicker is that a 1 gallon jug of napa GL-1 is cheaper than the equivalant volume of any other gear/motor oil.

1 gallon jug, NAPA part # NHF 65201 http://www.napaonline.com/Search/Detail ... 0006545685

5 gallon bucket NAPA part # NHF 65205 http://www.napaonline.com/Search/Detail ... 0006545685

[So Cal Mark]

it's now 30-40 years later, there have been advances in motor oils. As for motor oil attacking brass, I'd suggest you talk to an oil engineer, not an unnamed supplier (vendor)

[pope]

Mark, Its your turn, I'm exhausted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ventura ace]

I, for one was not happy with shifting effort using GL-1. The GL-1 was obtained from one of our regular Fiat parts vendors. After griping about it for a year or so, and thinking maybe I got stuck with a bad batch, I drained and refilled with fresh GL-1 from a different vendor, and was even more bothered by the tough, notchy shifting. I switched to Valvoline VR1 SAE50 racing motor oil (equivalent to 90 wt gear oil). Here's a link to some dialog on this topic from 2008:

http://www.fiatspider.com/f08/viewtopic ... ine#p27506

The Valvoline VR1 SAE50 racing motor oil has been in my tranny for more than 20K miles and 4 years now. I couldn't be happier with the way it's performed. I pulled my tranny out last week to replace the weeping front shaft seal, and drained the oil. The oil looks brand new. I'll report back in a few days when I look inside, and check out the synchros.

Alvon

[manoa matt]

Ace, was that oil in your trans when I drove your car about 2 years ago? Of all the spiders I've driven you have the tightest/precise shifting transmission. It felt like a gated shifter, granted your trans was recently rebuilt. I like the way GL-1 shifts in my trans, but I have not tried anything else to compare to.

I also think I got a bad batch of GL-1 once. The bottle sat for a year before I opened it, but it still had the foil seal at the top which was not broken. As I was squeezing the bottle to get it the trans I noticed the last inch of it was milky white, like it had water in it.

[Mathew26]

Hey guys, I am not trying to confuse anyone. I'm trying to do just the oposite and at the same time save transmissions. I would run GL1 in my trans but I sadly have an automatic. Now Mark thats not fair trying to call me out on "unnamed" suppliers. You're a vendor too and everyone knows there are secrets in any industry. You wouldn't go into Wal-Mart and say "hey where did y'all buy these generic brand things?" Thats just simply not fair to me or any other vendor.

But if anyone would like to do a little research on the web just look up "anti-wear additives" and you will find very quickly the substances used. I will say this holding back as Wiki is never a perfect source but this will help to lead the way
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AW_additive

Please feel free to cll 1-866 66Exxon and they too will advise against a motor oil due to the additives.

Thanks

Matt

[kuhndg]

[[quote[quote="Mathew26"]Now Mark thats not fair trying to call me out on "unnamed" suppliers. You're a vendor too and everyone knows there are secrets in any industry. You wouldn't go into Wal-Mart and say "hey where did y'all buy these generic brand things?" Thats just simply not fair to me or any other vendor.

I will be the first to admit that most of you folks forgot more than I know about these cars......but as a consumer, that is the most asinine comment I have ever seen on this forum! I can't speak for anyone else on this thread, but I believe I have the right to know what I am buying. Makes me wonder what it is you would have to hide by not wanting to share?

[Mathew26]

John,
I'm sorry for all this jibber-jabber on your thread. I hope that somewhere in all this you have found something for your car, and hope it is an easy fix.

Matt

[pooldoctorstl]

Hey Ventura Ace, Please do post the results after you tear down the trans, I am interested. I drained the Pennzoil Syncromesh out of mine (never drove it, just wasted $17 ) and put in 90w GL1 mineral oil. The guys at NAPA looked at me like I had 3 heads when I asked them for it and they didn't have it, they sold me the Syncromesh. Then I found it at a Federated Auto Parts store. Seems to shift fine but I would like to know what you found. PM me if you want because I don't want to throw any more gas on this fire.

Thanks,
Jeff