Re: What oil do ppl use in their auto g/boxs? (ma70) plus trans cooler Q's
Sun, 04 January 2004 02:54
Piss off the standard one and the SuperCheap one.
Get the biggest and highest quality oil cooler you can. The saying "do it right, once" is amazingly true. If you are actually serious on the car you should look at getting something custom made.
Places like ARE (http://www.are.com.au) can do this for you in almost any dimensions that you specify, but they are a little expensive. Looks for somewhere a little less well known and you should get something made up for about $300-$400.
Alternatively a sizeable Autobarn store will generally stock a solid range of coolers because they mostly lean towards the V8 market and they're all into big autos. You can get something decent for about $150-$200... but if you buy off-the-shelf you are stuck with the sizes and fittings that they provide. Still a good upgrade though.
The biggest telltale of an auto being on the way out is taking a long time between gear changes under full acceleration and/or hitting the rev limiter on gear changes. Once it starts doing this, start saving for a new gearbox. The whole time that a gearbox is 'between' gears the clutches in the auto are slipping.. and the more the slip the mroe they wear, so the problem gets worse and worse until eventually one or more of your gears will suddenly disappear!
The way to avoid this latest problem is to fit a trans cooler (as you are doing), and treat the box with a little respect for the time being (try to avoid full throttle changes, and don't even dream of downshifting with the gear lever). Once you have a bit more money, you can get a modified valve body (there is a place in SA called MV Automatics that does these for about $400 on exchange) which will mean that the gearbox shifts quicker (can get chirps on gearchange depending on power!) and that the clutches slip less. Makes you faster AND stops the gearbox wearing out.. great investment if you ask me!
Fluid-wise the Toyota Type IV fluid seems to be the best, but generally any correctly rated Dexron fluid (most A340s specify D-II or D-III) will do the trick as long as you're running a good transmission cooler. Don't run the older style auto fluid (TQF) or it will end the whole shooting match.
Sun, 04 January 2004 02:54
