[Spridgets] Motor Oil in the Gear Box

Dean Hedin dlh2001 at comcast.net
Sat Mar 27 15:49:00 MST 2010


The 140wt Experiment...

I emailed CRC's customer support on Friday and they indicated that the 140wt gear oil
could be found at NAPA. 

The local NAPA had a few quarts 'in the back" (not on display). $17 for two quarts.
The bottles were dusty.  There must not be much action these days on
the ol' 140wt.

I put it in the tranny this afternoon and took it for a spin.  I think I like the results.
Here are my observations.

It was about 45F today.  It took about an hour for the oil to fill into the tranny 
because it is so thick.  I might have saved some time if I warmed the quart containers 
beforehand.  It's not as thick as STP but it's pretty gooey.

I saved the drained oil for use in the roto-tiller and for oiling the chainsaws.

I fired up the car and let it warm up for a few minutes (as I always do). 
The transmission noise when idling in neutral was definitely reduced to an acceptable level.   
No totally eliminated but much better.
 
As I pulled away from the house and reved out through 1st gear and shifted into second...
No crunch!   But it was strange. It was a slow, gated shift.  Hard to describe because
I have sort of trained myself to make the shift carefully.   It seems that the thick oil tends
to block the shift for a little time interval until the synchos match up in speed.  
It was like this for the first few 1st to 2nd shifts I made as I went out of the neighborhood.   
Not a quick shift, but no crunching.  2nd to 3rd, 3rd to 4th were fine as always, 
they did not seem to be impacted. 

Things changed a little as it warmed up and I covered more distance.

At about 5-6 mile point I was reading about 140F on the engine temp guage.
I then attempted a quick 1st-2nd shift that crunched slightly.  It now seemed
to be behaving like it does with the 75 wt. oil when cold.  I felt as though I must now
do the shifts carefully as before..and I did.

I was low on fuel so I then headed towards a gas station that was about 3-4 miles away.
As I was getting close to the gas station the engine was now at 160F.  It seem like  the tendency 
to crunch subsided much like it did when it warmed up with the previous thinner gear oil.

After the fillup I then drove maybe another 10 miles through some country roads.  
With the cool ambient my engine temp never went above 165F.

As expected, as the tranny warmed up the noise in neutral at idle increased a little, but it was
much better that with the thinner weight oil.

So there you have it.  Granted. I've only done one test drive but I think it is a big improvement.

The tendency to cruch is minimized when cold, you then move through a narrow
temperture window later on where the tendency to crunch re-apppears.  As it warms up
further it then goes away as it did with the thinner oil.  Neutral noise is reduced.

We'll have to see how it goes through the summer and on some longer trips...
As always YMMV...


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