

| Subject: | '73 Safare Update - Synthetics and shifting |
| From: | David Schwarze |
| Date: | Sun, 30 Apr 1995 00:56:12 -0700 (PDT) |
Yup, it's me again, Last night I was putting in the 3 quarts of Mobil-1 Synthetic lube (75-90) in the transmission. I did this at night because I live in a condo and if people saw me under the bus, they would probably blow the whistle on me for working on my car in a parking spot, which is verboten. Anyway, I found that if I took out the drivers side heater bellows thing, I had plenty of room to just stick the nozzle of the gear oil container into the fill hole and squeeze. What could be easier? I don need no stinkin pump! So I am on the third quart, and when I stick the nozzle into the fill hole and squeeze, I feel resistance and then a pop and the resistance goes away. DOH!!! I left the cap on the bottle! Now it is inside the transmission. I try to feel around for it inside the fill hole with my finger, but feel nothing but steel. It's late, and I'm tired, so I decide to worry about it tomorrow. So today as soon as the coast is clear I decide to drain the transmission again and hope that the cap comes out. I clean my oil pan till I think I can eat off of it, and then drain out $25 worth of gear oil - no cap. I pour the oil back into the quart bottles and squeeze it into the transmission again. There ain't no way I'm dropping the transmission cause of a lousy little plastic cap (1" by 3/8"). While I was under there I replaced the shift coupler cage thing with the one from the junkyard. Next I drained the oil and replaced with 15-50 Mobil-1 Synthetic and the "original equipment" filter. Took out the screen and looked for metal particles (holding my breath). Only found a couple of small ones, and it's been a LONG time since I took that thing off. I think I'm okay. Driving the bus, the first thing I notice is that the transmission is a lot louder. Almost sounds like I have a bad bearing. The 3 quarts of gear oil didn't quite fill it up, and I lost some draining and refilling. Before, it was over-full. I think I'm going to buy another quart, roll the left rear wheel up on a block, and fill it till it runs out the hole. I hope that quiets it down to how it was before. The second thing I notice is that I only have a single gear now. Oh wait, there are 4 gears and reverse after all, but they are all within the space that first gear occupied before. Man, this shifter is tight! What an amazing difference a small piece of cracked metal can make. Between the new seat, the new shift feel, and the tires, it feels like I'm driving someone else's bus! After a while, I notice the oil pressure is dropping off. Only 10 psi at idle, just like before. I did not expect this to happen with the synthetic. The only reason I went for synthetic was because I thought it would hold its viscosity better, but so far it doesn't look like it. I'll have to reserve final judgement until after a long hot freeway drive, though. -David ============================================================================ David Schwarze '73 VW Safare Custom Camper (Da Boat) SAIC Comsystems, San Diego Calif. '73 Capri GT 2800 (Da Beast) e-mail: schwarze@nosc.mil '87 Mustang Lx 5.0 (Da Sleeper) http://papaya.nosc.mil/~schwarze '93 Weber WG-50 (Da Piano) ============================================================================
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