Since the car is still pretty new to me, its time to change the transmission fluid. At least I think so.
Interestingly enough, the service manual doesn’t actually say to change the transmission fluid or the differential fluid. (I’m assuming that they are calling the tranmission fluid differential fluid in the maintenance book). Okay, they do say to change it in extreme circumstances and during towing. Besides that, they just say to “inspect” it.
Well, with a 5-speed, to “inspect” it (propperly, IMHO) you have to drain it.
If you are going to drain it, you might as well change it.
I should reiterate: I’m doing this as part of what I think is “standard” maintenance. I dont suspect anything is wrong. The throw-out bearing needs to be replaced, but thats not related to the fluid.
To start the process out, I headed down to my local AutoZone store to see what they had in stock. I was looking for a GL-4 spec fluid specifically. I couldn’t find what I needed there. One thing about me, I dont have a ton of patience. So, then I turned to the internet. I saw a lot of folks running some Royal Purpose oil that said GL-4/GL-5. Then I saw some folks raving about some Redline synthetic MT-90.
I picked up two quarts and let them sit on my self a couple of weeks until I got the time to mess with it.
When that time came, I found the jack points, pretty helpful to just throw the jack under the frame and lift the whole thing up. A note of caution; however, if you just lift the front - the car won’t be level for you to check the fluid level going in.
As with most cars, you want to take off the ‘fill’ bolt prior to draining the fluid. Last thing you want to find out after draining the transmission is that you can’t put the fluid back in (because some previous knucklehead decided to cross thread it or something else dumb.) With the manual transmission - it’s also easier for most folks to just fill it from the top of the transmission – if you have an aftermarket air intake at least (which I do).
The bolts in question are all 24mm. If all you have are SAE sockets/wrenches you can probably find that a 15/16th will do the trick. My bolts were all 6-point, but all I had were 12-point sockets in that size. It did get the job done, but I’m looking to expand the shop selection of sockets now. :-)
I took of the reverse switch bolt first. Followed by the fill bolt. I do not know the torque specs on them, but someone put them on harder than I had ever seen before. Wowza. Good thing my 1/2” socket wrench is 24” long, I needed the leverage. Lastly, I threw the oil catch pan under the drain and broke loose the drain plug.
Out poured what looked like a healthy amount of blackish oil. Reminded me of every oil change I have done, really.
It did smell a bit…. different. Not burnt, maybe a little sweet actually. It also could have been my mind playing tricks on me. I also thought I may have seen a hit of ‘red’ and considered the previous owners had put ATF in it or something.
With the black juices flowing from the bottom of the chassis, I set a timer and went to play a video game.
Once the transmission was what I conidered good and drained, I decided to clean up a little of the exterior transmission casing. There was dirt and oil all over the place. It didn’t look fresh, it doesn’t look leaky. It just looks like it has 200k miles on it.
Wrapping it up, I threw a (clean) funnel in top of the transmission and let her fill in. (And then did it again for the second quart). I did throw a catch pan under the fill bolt just to catch anything that may have overfilled; but nothing came out – remember I had the front only jacked up. I could fit my little finger in there and it was right at the spot the fluid should be in.
Yay!
Next cleaned off all of the bolts:
Once things were pretty clean, I threw them all back on and tightened to 24ft/lbs.
Then I was golden. I know I didn’t have a reason other than general maintenance to do this, but when it was done I thought things felt to shift “better”. Who knows, it could by some psychosomatic resposne or something.
But, I know it was done. I recorded the milage and what was done in the ‘Fuely’ app. And now I’m good for another 60-ish thousand miles (since the book doesn’t tell me specifically when to change it lol)
TODO: figure out how to add pictures.