Motor oil in Tranny... wtf

[Beldar]

Alright, I went to my buddy Steven's house cuz his friend was working on his Integra over there. When I got there they were putting tranny dope in it, and apparently they didn't have enough so his friend left in the Camaro to go get more. 10 minutes later we get a call, and the guys at Auto Zone looked up the car to see what tranny fluid it needed, and the guy said to put MOTOR OIL in the tranny.. :banghead: Me and steven asked his dad, his dad thought it was crazy. We asked the neighbors, they thought it was crazy. And we get a call back when they left auto zone, and apparently the guy bought motor oil anyway. Im thinking about going back over there to see how it worked... but anyone ever heard of this?

[a tothee aron]

Im pretty sure you dont use motor oil, because then there wouldnt be a thing called "transmission fluid"

[elliott678]

In a manual transmssion Honda used to recommend 10W-30, but now they have thier own lube avalible at the dealership. A freind of mine went through the same thing a couple years ago, he switched to a synthetic manual tranny lube instead.

[Beldar]

Interesting. Pretty crazy. I need to call my friend back.

[OE800]

the original mini coopers used motor oil in their manual trannys, the engine and the trans shared an oiling system and used the same oil.

[some_ugly_guy]

Motorcycle engines that don't have a seperated tranny share the same motor oil.:confuzed:

[car_boy_16]

Haha Beldar...Yes a lot of Honda guys use regular motor oil in their transaxles...Only with manual transmissions though. The Honda automatics use Honda Automatic Transmissions fluid though. In my Prelude's shop manual, it says to use motor oil, but as Elliott says, Honda is now offering special gearbox fluid to satisfy the anal consumers who think it's a blasphemy to be so "generic". It's a public relations decision mostly, but there are some advantages of using specific gearbox fluid but Honda was just trying to keep things consumer-friendly and simple for everybody. I guess the world just likes to make things fucking complicating haha.

[DarcSystems]

oil is oil. Transmission fluid is oil. A lot of tranny's use Gear oil. A lot of manual transmissions use automatic transmission fluid. It's a mixed up world. Essentially you could use any lube in a manual transmission. Auto's however require whatever the specific fluid is for the friction material in the transmission. It's not unheard of though, you be surprised how many fluids on your car are the same as another, but relabled.

[pat99872]

I just bought 15 quarts of honda Z1 atf for $53 shipped.

I couldn't of been happier.

It usually costs $6 a quart.

:D

[davido]

I don't know about newer jap cars, but a friend had a 71 cutlass, and thought he grabbed trans fluid but it was motor oil and added some to it and burned it out really quick, that was an expensive mistake.

[DarcSystems]

that's because it wasn't designed to use motor oil :)

[FatBastard]

at least here in finland, using motor oil can be prefered to using "transmission oil".

you see, when there are lots of start ups at arctic temperatures, you don´t want the fluid in your tranny to have a high viscosity (sp?).

i´m running Mobil 1 at the moment in my tranny (if i remember correctly).

you guys realize that the difference between oils (synthetic, semi-synthetic, motor, transmission) mostly is the viscosity of the oils? of course better synthetic oils have addatives that can benefit the engine, but mostly it´s the viscosity. therefore the question isn´t if motor oil can be used in you engine, but more if you transmission can work with oils that have low viscosity.

the lower the viscosity the oil has, the more it can lubricate (basically...). but some trannys don´t work with 0-40W oils. like my previous car. the gears popped out, for some reason...

anyway. the point is, that the "brand" of the oil isn´t important, but more so the characteristics of it.