*** WARNING: THIS IS AN OIL THREAD *** Those of you who are sick of the topic are fairly warned.
Doug from BilletFlow contacted me, and said that they had seen some "glazing" of the synchro rings on some cars with MTL. The "spin" from some of his contacts is that "MTL is too slippery" He asked for my opinion.
Here is what I commented:
1) The coefficicent of friction for Red Line MTL is lower than any standard lubricant other than motor oil. It is higher than Dexron, gear oils, and other ATF's. So it is not likely to cause accelerated wear due to synchro "spin".
Honda used to recommend 10w30 or 5w30 motor oil for its transmissions because of the good synchro action. But that required frequent changers, and those are 100 HP engines with low torque. The shearing forces in a Cobra T56 are much greater.
Honda also changed its recommendation in 1996 - I had a 1995 NSX, and it came with 10w30 motor oil. In 1996, Honda developed its own manual transmission lubricant, which is modeled after MTL and is called...drum roll...MTF. Honda rasied the change freq from 30k miles to 100k with the MTF.
2) Red Line recommends MTL for T56's used on the track, D4ATF for the street. D4 is more slippery than MTL.
3) The 200 Cobra 'r" came with Mobil1 I think. Mobil1 ATf is more slippery than recgular Dexron III or Mercon V, both of which are more slippery than MTL.
4) What about GM Syncromesh? Well, it appears to be a fortified light parrafin based lube, similar to motor oil, but with some additives for tranny use. It was designed and fits the spec for tranmissions developed in Germany by Getrag, and the ZF transmission used for a while in the LT1 Corvettes. This was done because those German trannies have unusual synchro and yellow metal internals, and GM found that some GL-5 lubes corroded them.
GM syncromesh may or may not stand up in our cars - if you use it, change it often.
As to the claim that "TTC recommends it", the engineer I talked to at TTC denied this. I have never seen anyone produce a shred of tangible evidence other than hearsay on that point.
5) One word of caution. MTL needs to warm up to work its magic, It is possible than when used from a cold start and driven hard with a built up Cobra, synchro action might not be optimal. But I still come back to the fact that its COF is nearly ideal, and nearly flat across the RPM range since it is a "designed" lube.
So the answer is..perhaps, but the jury is still out. The guys Doug cited are not running cars lightly, and it miught just as well be that were it not for the MTL, the trannies might have already failed!
3)
Doug from BilletFlow contacted me, and said that they had seen some "glazing" of the synchro rings on some cars with MTL. The "spin" from some of his contacts is that "MTL is too slippery" He asked for my opinion.
Here is what I commented:
1) The coefficicent of friction for Red Line MTL is lower than any standard lubricant other than motor oil. It is higher than Dexron, gear oils, and other ATF's. So it is not likely to cause accelerated wear due to synchro "spin".
Honda used to recommend 10w30 or 5w30 motor oil for its transmissions because of the good synchro action. But that required frequent changers, and those are 100 HP engines with low torque. The shearing forces in a Cobra T56 are much greater.
Honda also changed its recommendation in 1996 - I had a 1995 NSX, and it came with 10w30 motor oil. In 1996, Honda developed its own manual transmission lubricant, which is modeled after MTL and is called...drum roll...MTF. Honda rasied the change freq from 30k miles to 100k with the MTF.
2) Red Line recommends MTL for T56's used on the track, D4ATF for the street. D4 is more slippery than MTL.
3) The 200 Cobra 'r" came with Mobil1 I think. Mobil1 ATf is more slippery than recgular Dexron III or Mercon V, both of which are more slippery than MTL.
4) What about GM Syncromesh? Well, it appears to be a fortified light parrafin based lube, similar to motor oil, but with some additives for tranny use. It was designed and fits the spec for tranmissions developed in Germany by Getrag, and the ZF transmission used for a while in the LT1 Corvettes. This was done because those German trannies have unusual synchro and yellow metal internals, and GM found that some GL-5 lubes corroded them.
GM syncromesh may or may not stand up in our cars - if you use it, change it often.
As to the claim that "TTC recommends it", the engineer I talked to at TTC denied this. I have never seen anyone produce a shred of tangible evidence other than hearsay on that point.
5) One word of caution. MTL needs to warm up to work its magic, It is possible than when used from a cold start and driven hard with a built up Cobra, synchro action might not be optimal. But I still come back to the fact that its COF is nearly ideal, and nearly flat across the RPM range since it is a "designed" lube.
So the answer is..perhaps, but the jury is still out. The guys Doug cited are not running cars lightly, and it miught just as well be that were it not for the MTL, the trannies might have already failed!
3)
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