Hi all...

Some of you might remember this thread:
http://www.aussiemagna.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42927

My input shaft bearings died and I had a bearing kit put in.
Well the mechanic just put general gearbox oil in like he did with every other car... And on cold mornings, the gearbox was REALLY notchy, especially in 2nd where I nearly needed 2 hands to pull it into gear. As soon as it warmed up though it was fine.

After a couple months of saga and a 105,000k service by another mechanic who changed the trans oil again with a different type, it hadn't gone away.

So in the end I went and bought my own trans oil which I had used before with no problems, Castrol VMX and got the original guy who fixed the gearbox to drain and refill with my oil.

Result: Problem fixed! :D
So the 3rd GEN manual gearboxes must be really sensitive to the oil you use, unless anyone else here has a better reason why?

I've heard auto's are the same. If you don't use the mitsubishi recommended oil they seem to do funny things.

Not at all unexpected, the old Saab 900's used to suffer from it something awful. Used to have to use redline in them...

some of the manual falcons had problems with the oil ford was using they fixed the problem with dexIII auto fluid

theres heaps of different grades of gear oil out now its best to use the correct fluid
most 4x4 diffs and gear boxes use a 80w90 if you were to use this in a magna you would have gear change problems. they used to use this fluid in most older 4 speed boxes

Noticed the same thng, when I switched to some decent oil (Castrol Syntrax from memory). Quite costly @ $25 a litre, but well worth it.

Use to be very notchy into second gear and make a crunching/clicking noise. Now just goes in silently and smoothly.

so anyone have any better recommendations for 2nd gen 4cyl auto than the M stuff it normally uses?

I had a Rover 3500 for many years - the first shape - which was a very rare factory manual. Those gearboxes were hell to live with and very fragile and expensive to repair. The palliative to its problems of severe stiffness when cold and sloppiness when hot was a 'reverse viscosity' gearbox oil that Valvoline made. This stuff behaved as if it was a thin oil when cold and then morphed into thick oil behavior when hot - it was a godsend on the Rover. I used to get it from a gearbox specialist that repaired the car, then I found out that the local Auto-One stocked it. I don't have any in the shed anymore so I can't be sure of its exact name but maybe ask around for it - Valvoline 'reverse viscosity' gearbox oil.

Like Chisholm says Castrol Syntrans is the business to improve the gear change.
The recommended Castrol VMX-M didn't make any improvement for me but the synthetic Syntrans was magic.
Definitely worth the extra dollars.
Redline synthetic transmission oil is one that gets good reports too. They have some interesting tech stuff on their website about the benefits of synthetic in this application.