At 06:46 PM 5/15/98 -0700, you wrote:
>
>I think most people just leave the old oil in.  I did.  It's ok to mix
>redline with the old oil....even if the old is not synthetic.  Says so
>right on the can.  VW considers the trans. oil to be "lifetime," never
>to be changed during the life of the vehicle.  I was surprised at how
>clean and fresh looking my old transaxle looked after 90,000
>miles...still translucent...not at all black.
>Good Luck
>steve

The reason for changing tranny oil is to get rid of metal particles in the
oil. It never gets black like engine oil because there's no blowby from the
cylinders to make it dirty.

The oil itself is usually still good, but the contamination causes wear.
Because of this, the last bit of oil left in the gearbox is not usually a
problem.

Most trannies have a magnetic insert in the drain plug that traps the
shavings to keep them out of the gears..

Now, if you have an automatic, the whole world changes. There are ways (I
don't know how it's done!) to flush the torque converter to remove all the
old fluid. In automatics, the fluid will deteriorate because of the heat
generated in the torque converter.

Chuck Kuecker
Cary, Illinois

ckuecker@mcs.net

'83 Scirocco (Katy's car now)
'58 Ghia Convert
'75 Bug
'67 Bug
'63 Bug (*still* for sale)
'91 Vanagon