old school vw scirocco 020 fluid question

[superslippery]

i'm upgrading my 87 vw scirocco 16v to a 2.0 liter 16v engine with a few goodies including sport cam, lightened flywheel, tt exhaust, and a peloquin 80% mini LSD which is actually a bolt and shim kit which increases preload on a factory spring on the drive flanges.

so i would like to know which fluid to run in my manual transmission/transaxle. the present trans which i will be replacing has a problem 3rd gear which grinds often when downshifting. it has done this since i bought the car 4 years ago and has not gotten any worse. i replaced the trans oil with redline and it did make the grinding quite a bit less but didn't eliminate it.

but i have read a few posts on here and have found most often the gear oil recommended is amsoil and then redline. i have seen many posts about reasons not to use mobil 1 and some others saying no to royal purple although those gave no definite reasons.

anyways, i'm looking for a good performance synthetic (i guess) oil for my transaxle. i was going to use swepco 201 as i currently have about a quart leftover from when i replaced my porsche's trans but i decided against using that as the price has risen quite a bit and it's now over $50 for the 2 liter size they sell it in which seems a little high.

ok, please advise on which i should consider or which not to use.

thanks

 

[webfors]

what's the manual call for in the tranny? Meaning, what spec and viscosity?

Redline lightweight shockproof is a great product to mix in if you're experiencing grind. However, it would have to suit the application in your case. A lot of Subaru owners run it straight, some mix it with another quality fluid.

Others here will say never to mix, which I agree with to an extent. Depends on the needs.

 

[mechtech2]

Does your trans only hold 1.1 qts. on a refill?
I'd use Red Line MT90 or Amsoil MTG.
We are talking about an older design used tranny , with known synchro problems.

 

[superslippery]

oem specs are 2.1 quarts of 80W hypoid oil GL-4

 

[mechtech2]

I still like the slightly heavier versions [MT90 and MTG] in that trans at this point, and considering where you live.

 

[superslippery]

so what oils? is royal purple any good? that is the only one easily available or without shipping. and if not purple, then i seem to find everyone here is more partial to amsoil or redline. what about swepco? what are the differences between all these?

i just want a good synthetic that will treat my tranny right for mostly street driving but i tend to drive very hard without being too tough on transmissions as my clutches tend to last hundreds of thousands of miles despite my lead feet. also, car may see some track time in the future including autocross and club road racing but this would be fairly limited.

thanks and start throwing names of oils as that's what i'm interested in hearing about.

 

[mechtech2]

I would conspicuously avoid RP .
At this point, you could have had the other stuff delivered already.

 

[unDummy]

Amsoil or Redline are easy choices.

If you don't want the mail order hassle, your Ford, Gm, Kia, Nissan.... dealers have GL4 manual gear oils.

 

[JohnBrowning]

Amsoil get's pushed because we have something like 3 Amsoil Site Sponsors andno Redline site sponsor. I like Amsoil oils but they do not campare to Redline for MTL/MT90 for transaxles. The only way I would run Amsoil gear lubricants is if they where given to me free of charge! I can get them localy at Napa and Ihave tried Amsoil,Royal Purple,Swepco and other's and not once have I have found anything that works as consistently well as Redline's gear oils in everything from Corvettes to my Toyota Camry!Now I am not brand loyal when it comes to motor oil because I have never had any instance where I could tell a drastic difference in oils but I will only run Redline gear oils. I do not care what test's Amsoil puts up on their site in real world use I have not found anything better!I have never had a wear issue with the other lubricants in my transmission or any transmission really it is has always been a matter of cold weather performance. When I use Redline it shifts the same from mile 1 to mile 30K with Amsoil and Roypurple especialy the shift charteristics degraded fast about 10K miles for RP and about 15-20K for Amsoil. The first thing to go was cold temp shifting performance then after that went the warm shift feel started to get notchy.

I have found that I can usualy find a proper blend by useing MTL/MT90 in various rations for each application. IN modern transmissions I also find that often you can run MTL in place of the MT90 or MTL/MT90 blend with no extra wear but improved milage.For older designs I would probably stick with MT90 or at the most a 50/50 blend many older transmissions are clearanced so large that if you try to too thin you end up starving some of the upper bearing assemblys.Old school designed relied on the gears to cary the oil to all the parts.