Changed out my gear oil this weekend. Embarrassingly, I hadn't done it on this car yet and it looked as if it hadn't been done in a long time(looked like a nasty grey lead milkshake)

Found some metal sparkles on the drain plug. I took a 2 hour drive and the tranny feels fine and seemed grateful for the new fluid. Before I changed the fluid, shifting would get sticky after driving for an hour or so. Didn't happen this time but......

should I be worried or is this not abnormal?

You're bound to find some metal in the transmission since there's no filtering of the oil -- seeing chunks or huge amounts of fine metal might be cause for concern.

If the transmission seems to be working fine then don't worry about it. Just keep up the maintenance from this point on.

That's good to hear. No chunks to speak of. Thanks.

sparkles of doom..hahahha, LMAO! SHould be fine, i need to change my fluid soon as well, what did you use? IM looking at using redline oil again as i have in the past.

Club favorite is Swepco 201. Supposedly the transmission was designed around 201, something about newer gear oils being too slippery.

I was in a rush and needed the car right away so I just used Valvoline DuraBlend 80w-90w which I already had. I'll probably redo the job as I ran a little short and my flaps was closed so I had to top it off with some regular GL-5 Pennzoil I got at Kmart.

This debate always goes around in circles but it seems like using Swepco, although probably not essential, is to error on the side of caution.