You might have a leaking seal somewhere. I'm sure some oils are more aromatic than others, but FWIW I've never smelled anything while running any of RedLine's oil, including MTL, but I've not used MTLV. Same with other oils in other cars.
​​​

 

When you changed the gear oil did you replace the crush washers on both the drain and fill plugs? I didn’t the last time (thought I’d be lucky cause I forgot to buy new ones) and oil leaked out when hot. Fun exercise to replace washers when you don’t want to drain the transmission.

 

both washers are copper ones so i annealed them to make them soft again... no leaks.

I'll give the Red Line a go then at the weekend. I'll retain what I've taken out again just in case. Hopefully it'll be good.

Cheers everyone.

 

Seems like all the MT-LV feedback is positive for street use. Has anyone used it for track HPDE or autoX ?

 

I'm curious if anyone else has as well. I called redline a while back and they did not recommend this oil for our gearbox for street and especially not track duty.

 

Now my ears have perked up. Do you remember any more of the conversation? Was the recommendation due to your location and expected ambient operating temperatures? If I lived in one of the hot US states I’d probably have stuck with the Ford gear oil. It was good during the summer when temperatures were 20° Celsius and above. So far the shifting in my 2010 remains smooth at 180,000 kilometres. I’ve put on about 50,000 with this gear oil (was messing about testing different types and went back to MTLV). My 8 is my daily.

 

I believe it was one of the engineers I spoke to. He mainly just pointed to it being too thin and referred to the manufacturer spec weight for the transmission. I got the impression there wasn't much he could say due to the potential liability.

I'd love to try the stuff, and I'm going to be swapping it into my truck soon, but I'd rather not beta test it for severe duty such as autox and track.

I'll have to update my thread, but I had an incident where I ended up losing a bunch of transmission oil, where both myself and the tow truck driver thought it was engine oil due to how clean it looked and smelt. This was with the Ford fluid after 3 trackdays and about 340 autox runs. Kind of regret not sending it out to Blackstone.

 

Did you send in a sample for testing? Your area has more extreme temperatures than mine and you appear to be putting on lots of regular miles like I do.

 

Have used MT-LV and Motul DCTF (similar fluids) on track, autocross, and street in my old (now my wife's S2) and it's been great. Shifts way better cold than heavy fluid and every fluid change has been clean and the fluid isn't burnt or anything abnormal.

 

i ended up having some grinds and mis-shifts at a hillclimb recently where we were basically lapping the mountain. i have since gone back to redline MT-90 for piece of mind since i'll be getting back into more track stuff next season. redline MTL was nice for winter but went a little awry during heavy duty use. there was a LOT of WOT time...

 

Now that would be a great way to spend the weekend- nice touch with the pedal box camera. There’s a couple local small mountain roads that would be perfect for a hill climb except for the mountain bikes that randomly cross like deer.

Your experience with the gear oil backs up what I thought after trying out a few types. Thanks Hufflepuff.

 

I did do an oil analysis at 30k miles. Unfortunately it is tainted by a shift problem I thought was due to the oil. About 3 k out from the change shifting became stiffer. I thought the oil was showing its age, so I changed it and did the UOA pull you see below. No difference in shifting. Then I began to look for the real problem. My TO bearing is noisy at times, like its dragging on the spring fingers. Also I lost some pedal throw, which I was able to adjust out. Bingo, shifts great again, but I will have to replace some clutch parts soon.
The UOA below reflects the miles of poor shifts due to a dragging clutch I believe, rather than any issue with the oil or trans, and the compatibility of same. I love this oil choice, and it holds up well in the heat we had here this summer, with no issue. It never gets notchy or feels too thin in the heat, like I have had in other cars/oils.

For the edification and the general good of the community, () I will do another UOA pull at 10k miles of the stuff that is in there now, to get a look-see.

The drain magnet was very clean, BTW.

 

So basically still OK ?
I also switched over to this stuff on my previous rexi and did 30k miles on it best gearbox oil I've used

 

Even on my S1 with 29k miles this stuff smoothed out the shifts. Not a lot but it was noticeable. I’ve used it on past RX-8s, no complaints.

 

This was the fill that was in it when I replaced the clutch TO bearing. With the new clutch, shifts are much smoother. It was dragging for a while, and I really didn't notice it much.

I ended up contaminating this so I dumped it and filled with fresh MTLV. With the new clutch it is amazing, even at 272,000 miles.

 

FWIW I ended up putting MTLV in my Tacoma, it doesn't feel any better or worse than what I had in before which was Amsoil severe gear 75w90

 

can you even feel anything with a Tacoma shifter?