Mornin',

I posted this over on TheSamba and figured I'd do the same here:

On the basis of Daryl's post below, I immediately ran out Saturday morning
and drained the MT90 out of my freshly-rebuilt AA transaxle (last summer,
3500 miles) and filled it with Castrol Syntec 75/90, the only name brand
synthetic available at my local FLAPS.

The drain plug looked good; a few tiny shavings.

I noticed an immediate difference.  Before, I had to be very ginger with it
to avoid a very light grind into 2nd.  It shifts much, much more smoothly
now in all gears.  I'm glad this came up!

--
Joe T.
'85 Wolfsburg Westy Subie 2.2

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 7:00 PM, Daryl Christensen <daryl@aatransaxle.com>wrote:

> Kendall is only one of the oils and just one of many choices...
> From what I can decipher..Most all stock powered vans can use a NAME BRAND
> 75/90 Synthetic or similar gear oil and be fine. Valvoline is what my local
> Flaps sells and it seems to be a good match as Kendall can be hard to find.
> Royal Purple or Amsoil are used by many with no issues.
>
> For 165 hp and higher vans, we Syncro guys use the Swepco 210 which is a
> 80/140 non synthetic racing and industrial lube.
>
> The other very important key is to change the stuff every 2 yrs or so to
> keep and eye on what comes out of it. Metal particles and brass and just
> plain black watery stuff is a no-no.
> Same goes with flushing coolant and brake fluid....
>
> Daryl of AA Transaxle
> 425-788-4070
> "On the cutting edge of Old technology"
> 86 Syncro Westy w/Turbo Zetec in the trunk
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
> Richard Koerner
> Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 5:17 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Manual Tranny Oil
>
> Just noticed a discussion on the subaruvanagon list about tranny oil, as
> follows:
>
> "Redline no longer recommends their products for hypoid gears, making it
> completely unsuitable for Vanagon/T3 transaxles. So its Swepco 201 or 210,
> depending on your engine/power level."
>
> The fact that Redline changed their formulation on the MT-90 synthetic oil
> was recently confirmed by a tranny expert (at BBTB in January).  The new
> recommendation is Kendall 75-90 Synthetic (which IS a hypoid gear oil) with
> a change recommended every 2 years.  Sounds good to me.  My tranny (196,000
> miles) currently has MT-90, coming up on the 2 year change this summer, at
> which time I'll move to Kendall 75-90 as recommended.
>
> Kinda wondering how long these trannys last?  Guess it all depends on how
> it
> was driven; and I'm Mr. Gentle with mine, I'm in no big hurry.
>
> Rich
> San Diego
>