It is time to change the oil in my tranny and i was wondering if the royal purple syncromax would be a good oil to use. My freind has 3 bottels in his garage that i can have and i was wondering if it would work good in my tranny?? If not what oil should i get?
Thanks alot,
James

there is some conversation that states that our synco's might like dino oil better.We need a little friction. ????

Swepco gear oil.

Wait until a rebuild for the Royal Purple. Forget Swepco. Use 80W90 or 90W Gear oil from your FLAPS.

If the synchros are starting to go, use 90W140. It will help a little.

QUOTE (Red-Beard @ Jan 18 2005, 04:31 AM)

Wait until a rebuild for the Royal Purple. Forget Swepco. Use 80W90 or 90W Gear oil from your FLAPS. If the synchros are starting to go, use 90W140. It will help a little.

I agree. Changed to Dino oil in my transaxle. 90W-140 and it shifts much better although you got to take your time for a few miles till the trans warms up. 70 teener with side shift.

Unfortunate experience with my 928 put some synthetic oil in and it started popping out of gear and not going into others. ended up with a 2500.00 dollar hole in my wallet. Thats for a rebuild I put in my self.

Go down to your FLAPS and buy a good grade of regular ole gear oil, I prefer the heavier stuff, then send the money you saved to me.
All this snake oil stuff is marketing. Don't fall for it.
Slick 50, royal purple, the stuff on the info-mercials, it's all hype.

wait a minute....does this mean I was right!!!!!! Does this make me a 914 guru now???

Whatever you decide to put in, what you want is GL-5. NOT GL-4, and NOT some kinda one-size-fits-all gear oil (like GL-4/GL-5). The brand isn't really that important, although I use Kendall, and others swear by Swepco. You run GL-4 in your tranny and you'll be looking for a rebuild soon. As for the 928, the later ones may very well use GL-4, and GL-5 will kill 'em. GL5 is NOT better because it has a higher number. 4 does NOT supercede to 5, the specs and additive packages are different. Furthermore, adding ANY additive to make it slicker is BS, and it'll make the synchros non- or barely-functional. As in ALL applications, Slick 50 is a fraud (that's the term the Federal Courts used) that is likely to harm whatever you put it in, engine or tranny. AFIK, ALL of those products are pure crap and advertising hype, with NO basis in fact. HTH, The Cap'n

QUOTE (Cap'n Krusty @ Jan 18 2005, 01:58 PM)

Whatever you decide to put in, what you want is GL-5. NOT GL-4, and NOT some kinda one-size-fits-all gear oil (like GL-4/GL-5). The brand isn't really that important, although I use Kendall, and others swear by Swepco. You run GL-4 in your tranny and you'll be looking for a rebuild soon. As for the 928, the later ones may very well use GL-4, and GL-5 will kill 'em. GL5 is NOT better because it has a higher number. 4 does NOT supercede to 5, the specs and additive packages are different. Furthermore, adding ANY additive to make it slicker is BS, and it'll make the synchros non- or barely-functional. As in ALL applications, Slick 50 is a fraud (that's the term the Federal Courts used) that is likely to harm whatever you put it in, engine or tranny. AFIK, ALL of those products are pure crap and advertising hype, with NO basis in fact. HTH, The Cap'n

Hey captn--I think in a previous thread it was said to use 4 not five, you say 5 not 4---just clarifing is all........

QUOTE (Cap'n Krusty @ Jan 18 2005, 10:58 AM)

and others swear by Swepco

i have used swepco with very good results ...

Andy

PS: however, it does smell pretty bad once you get it on your heat exchangers ...

Andy,

The issue of SWEPCO is not whether or not it will work. It is excellent gear oil. The issue is whether or not it is worth $40/gallon when perfectly good gear oil is available for $10/gallon or less. Nothing I've uncovered shows it to be any different than similar weight gear oil, except anecdotal evidence. And there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that it made no difference.

James

QUOTE (Red-Beard @ Jan 18 2005, 11:37 AM)

except anecdotal evidence

that sure is true. i have not myself done any considerable testing, i just listened to the old farts that seem to know everything.
rich b. & brad told me to go swepco and it made a hell of a difference to whatever was in my tranny before.

i'm sure the same results can be archived with cheaper products,
i just didn't want to go through the hassle of "try & error" myself ...
Andy

If you drain out the old crappy worn out oil and put in swepco you will see an improvement. If you do the same but put in regular new oil you will probably see the same improvement.
i'm running swepco in my 915 and it works fine, but I also don't think it was worth the money I paid for it.

In reply to an earlier question, it's 5 for cars with "Porsche style" synchros, 4 for cars with the brass synchros. In reply to a more recent post, gear oil doesn't go bad with age and mileage. Old gear oil, assuming it's the right stuff for the tranny in question, works just as well as new gear oil of the same type. If the old oil is loaded with particulates, the tranny needs work, not an oil change. The Cap'n

I figured that old oil gets contaminated with moisture and crap and the oil could break down and loose some lubricity. Maybe it's some of the additives that break down.
I do know for a fact that old gear oil smells worse when you get it in your hair than new gear oil
Nothin in the world smells worse than an old junkyard tranny when you drain the oil that's been in there for 20 years.
If the oil doesn't go bad, and the only stuff that gets in it is from the tranny and not the oil, heck we would never even have to change the stuff.

I know they are talking about motor oil, but tranny oil does get the same problems.

http://www.motoroilbible.com/two.html

You're comparing apples to bicycles! Engine oil gets contaminants like water, acids, carbon and other combustion products, metal particles from miscellaneous wear items, gets exposed to a lot of really high temps (like close to or at combustion temps), and gets squeezed through passages only a couple thousandths thick. Gear oil suffers from none of these, except for getting crushed between the gears, and it has hypoid additives to make it work for that. It really doesn't wear out to any unacceptable degree. It DOES pick up metal particles, but under normal operation any damaging bits either get dropped to the bottom or caught by the magnet. The Cap'n

Here's what I want to know.. why does the borg warner T-5 (manual transmission) take dexron ATF? (mine, circa 1985, has brass syncros but the later ones have steel ones with some sort of bonded friction material on them) Has anyone ever tried putting ATF in a 901? Obviously it's up to handling the gear squishing loads, but it has noticably different properties. I wonder what would happen...

BTW, that motor oil bible guy lost some credibility in my book when he said cold engines don't run well because of thick oil