Which 75W-80 gear oil for manual transmission?

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inquirer

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Hi from Greece!

I am about to change the clutch of a 9th gen Mitsubishi Lancer 1.5L (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Lancer#2007.E2.80.93present_.28CY2A.E2.80.93CZ4A.29) and I will also replace the gear oil.

The manual calls for a Dia Queen NEW MULTI GEAR OIL, API GL-3, SAE 75W-80.


As for now I have found these oils:
 
Does Amsoil make one for your car's specs? I highly recommend Amsoil gear and transmission fluids.
 
Pentosin MTF 2 GL-4
Castrol Syntrans 75w-80 GL-4
Shell Spirax S6 75w-80 GXME GL-4


DO NOT USE ANY PRODUCT THAT MENTIONS GL-5 AT ALL IN A
SYNCROMESH MANUAL TRANSMISSION, IT MAY DAMAGE ANY SOFT
YELLOW METAL PARTS!
 
Last edited:
While my 2002 Lancer OZ Rally is quite a bit older and has a different 5-speed transmission, I've been very happy with Red Line MT-85 gear oil in the five speed tranny. I note Red Line recomends MTL for your newer Lancer.

Side question: how many kilometers on the vehicle? I've got 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) on mine with the original clutch. Or is this a performance upgrade?

In my particular Lancer, I *hated* the Amsoil Manual Transmission & Transaxle Gear Lube 75W-90. (This is the only Amsoil product I have ever not liked.) In the cold weather, shifting was very difficult and required a lot of effort until the transmission warmed up. When I contacted Amsoil, they suggested mixing it two quarts of the 75W-90 with something else, maybe their synchromesh fluid - was at least six years ago. This helped...but didn't fix it.

When I went to the Red Line MT-85...the difficult shifting when cold went away. Very happy with it.

Enjoy your Lancer. Ours has been a *great* little car.

later,
ben
 
Redline MTL. I use Redline MT90 in my Toyota and I can say that it's very possibly the best gear oil I've ever used in a manual transmission.
 
OP, I strongly suggest Redline MTL. They make three different viscosities. Experiment with each to see what works best. I've used MTL in many cars with great success. Currently I use MTL-85 in my 2003 BMW 330Ci. In the BMW I also used "regular" MTL as well as MT-90. All worked exceedingly well but MT-85 seems to work best in this particular BMW. In every vehicle I've used it in, Redline transmission/transaxle oils worked really, really well. IMO, I think gears lubes are what Redline does best.

Scott

PS I've also used Redline's D4-ATF and D6-ATF in the automatic transmissions of my other cars. Same result. Redline's ATF worked noticably better than the other brands.
 
Thanks everyone for your answers! Sorry for the delayed answer, it's because the time difference.

First of all, two questions for all of you:
Are any gear oils from those I mentioned or from those you mentioned fully synthetic?
Are fully synthetic gear oils better than semi-synthetic in the same sense as fully synthetic motor oils are better than semi-synthetic or mineral motor oils?


Originally Posted By: aquariuscsm
Does Amsoil make one for your car's specs? I highly recommend Amsoil gear and transmission fluids.


http://www.amsoil.com/shop/by-product/transmission-fluid/manual/

I don't see any 75W-30 oil. But maybe the Manual Synchromesh Transmission Fluid 5W-30 is compatible, because I see Red Line mentioning "Satisfies the gear oil viscosity requirements of 75W, 80W, and motor oil viscosities of SAE 30, 10W30, and 5W30" for its MTL 75W80 GL-4 Gear Oil.


Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
Pentosin MTF 2 GL-4
Castrol Syntrans 75w-80 GL-4
Shell Spirax S6 75w-80 GXME GL-4


DO NOT USE ANY PRODUCT THAT MENTIONS GL-5 AT ALL IN A
SYNCROMESH MANUAL TRANSMISSION, IT MAY DAMAGE ANY SOFT
YELLOW METAL PARTS!


Are you sure about this? If you visit Motul's official lubricant guide (https://www.motul.com/gr/en/products/recommendation) you can see that Motul suggests Motylgear 75W80 with an API GL-4/GL-5 for all the Lancers from the one with the 1.5L engine to the EVO X GSR (which has manual transmission). Is there any possibility that Motul's listing a harmful product for a car? By the way I have already used Motylgear, because when the car was new the gearbox was somewhat tight for my taste and there was actually a noticeable difference! And that's why I started this topic in the first place. If a gear oil can make a difference in the feeling of the gearbox maybe there is an even better product than the one I used, which by the way is semi-synthetic which makes me wonder if synthetic gear oils can perform even better.


Originally Posted By: kd5byb
While my 2002 Lancer OZ Rally is quite a bit older and has a different 5-speed transmission, I've been very happy with Red Line MT-85 gear oil in the five speed tranny. I note Red Line recomends MTL for your newer Lancer.

Side question: how many kilometers on the vehicle? I've got 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) on mine with the original clutch. Or is this a performance upgrade?

In my particular Lancer, I *hated* the Amsoil Manual Transmission & Transaxle Gear Lube 75W-90. (This is the only Amsoil product I have ever not liked.) In the cold weather, shifting was very difficult and required a lot of effort until the transmission warmed up. When I contacted Amsoil, they suggested mixing it two quarts of the 75W-90 with something else, maybe their synchromesh fluid - was at least six years ago. This helped...but didn't fix it.

When I went to the Red Line MT-85...the difficult shifting when cold went away. Very happy with it.

Enjoy your Lancer. Ours has been a *great* little car.

later,
ben


For the performance upgrade you mentioned, read the previous part of my answer. (In short, I already used another oil which I found better than the OEM, but I thought I maybe could find an even better one by asking. And someone raised the GL-5 concern so now I would also like to sort this out.)

The clutch is new (about 75,000 km / 46,600 miles) and is performing fine, but I get a noise which I think is the throwout bearing, so I'm thinking of replacing it. (I'm not quite sure yet though if I should change only the bearing or the whole clutch set or just let it be noisy. I read that many people change all the set even for a faulty bearing in order to avoid a future replacement of the clutch which requires the gearbox to be removed from the car.) Besides the noisy clutch, I didn't have any other problems with the car and I'm quite happy with it.


Originally Posted By: 29662
Redline MTL. I use Redline MT90 in my Toyota and I can say that it's very possibly the best gear oil I've ever used in a manual transmission.


Thanks for sharing your experience with it!


Originally Posted By: SLO_Town
OP, I strongly suggest Redline MTL. They make three different viscosities. Experiment with each to see what works best. I've used MTL in many cars with great success. Currently I use MTL-85 in my 2003 BMW 330Ci. In the BMW I also used "regular" MTL as well as MT-90. All worked exceedingly well but MT-85 seems to work best in this particular BMW. In every vehicle I've used it in, Redline transmission/transaxle oils worked really, really well. IMO, I think gears lubes are what Redline does best.

Scott

PS I've also used Redline's D4-ATF and D6-ATF in the automatic transmissions of my other cars. Same result. Redline's ATF worked noticably better than the other brands.


Is it OK to experiment with different viscosities or could using a not recommended one be bad for the gearbox?
By the way what gear oil does your BMW's manual suggest? I'm curious to see if you got the best result with the recommended grade or with another one.
I also would like to know what do you mean with "regular" bout MTL. Is it supposed to have an inferior formula compared to the MTs?
And my last question: You mentioned that you used many brands of ATF. Is it easy to mention them. I would like to see which ones you used and if they include Motul which is the only gear oil I have used so far. Thanks!
 
Amsoil synchromesh would be a suitable choice. If you can get Redline MTL, it is a great choice. It is fully synthetic ester based fluid last I knew. I run it in my 6spd MTX and like it very much.

The GL-3 requirement is odd for us here in the states to see.
 
Originally Posted By: badtlc
Amsoil synchromesh would be a suitable choice. If you can get Redline MTL, it is a great choice. It is fully synthetic ester based fluid last I knew. I run it in my 6spd MTX and like it very much.

The GL-3 requirement is odd for us here in the states to see.


Well that's what the manual says for all Lancers (gasoline - 1.5L to 2.0L - and diesel engines) with manual transmission. But isn't GL-4 compatible with it?
I'm wondering why does Amsoil lists Synchromesh as 5W30 and not 75W30, which if I got it right is the result of using two different standards to describe motor and gear oil viscosities.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: inquirer

Originally Posted By: SLO_Town
OP, I strongly suggest Redline MTL. They make three different viscosities. Experiment with each to see what works best. I've used MTL in many cars with great success. Currently I use MTL-85 in my 2003 BMW 330Ci. In the BMW I also used "regular" MTL as well as MT-90. All worked exceedingly well but MT-85 seems to work best in this particular BMW. In every vehicle I've used it in, Redline transmission/transaxle oils worked really, really well. IMO, I think gears lubes are what Redline does best.

Scott

PS I've also used Redline's D4-ATF and D6-ATF in the automatic transmissions of my other cars. Same result. Redline's ATF worked noticably better than the other brands.


Is it OK to experiment with different viscosities or could using a not recommended one be bad for the gearbox?
By the way what gear oil does your BMW's manual suggest? I'm curious to see if you got the best result with the recommended grade or with another one.
I also would like to know what do you mean with "regular" bout MTL. Is it supposed to have an inferior formula compared to the MTs?
And my last question: You mentioned that you used many brands of ATF. Is it easy to mention them. I would like to see which ones you used and if they include Motul which is the only gear oil I have used so far. Thanks!


OP:

As the original owner of my BMW and one obsessed by fanatical maintenance, I've tried several oils in my BMW. The first stuff I tried was BMW's OEM lube at 1,500 miles. At the time BMW didn't even sell it for retail sale and I had to take an empty gallon jug because they had it only in bulk. I used this for the first year or so of ownership.

I must add that from the day I took delivery my BMW had what I considered a slightly noisy first gear. BMW acknowledged the whine but said it wasn't bad enough to replace. This was one reason I changed the transmission oil so frequently. I wanted to closely monitor whether or not excessive metal was showing up in the drained fluid. Aside from the first change where there was ALOT of metal, everything has been good since and at 85K miles the transmission is absolutely perfect, though it still has a slightly noisy first gear - but less noisy than it was when I took delivery.

Then Pentosin came out with MTF 2, which they claimed was approved by BMW (and, BTW, was much different looking than the BMW OEM stuff I bought previously). I used the Pentosin for 20K or 30K miles, changing it every 5K miles or so; not because it needed it, I just wanted to key my eye on wear metals. I was still a bit concerned about the first gear whine. The Pentosin MTF 2 worked very well, perhaps ever so slightly better then the BMW OEM stuff.

Then at around 40K miles I switched to Redline MTL. I'd used Redline MTL and ATF in several other of my cars and always thought the stuff performed well. When I used MTL in my BMW the improvement was easily noticable. Shifting, though very good anyway, got even better; it being a bit less notchy. Importantly, it quieted the first gear whine slightly. The whine was still there but it was 1/3 less loud.

I tried MT-90 as well. We live in a hot summer climate and the MT-90 worked well in summer but was a every so slightly "stiff" in winter. Still doing 5K trans oil changes I pretty much stuck with MTL and was always happy. But about a year or two ago Redline introduced MT-85. I began using that and found that it gave me the best results in this particular transmission and in the climate I live in.

All of Redline's gear lubes are ester based. The only difference between the "MTL" fluids is viscosity. From thin to thick the order is MTL, MT-85, MT-90. All are GL4.

Once again I cannot overstate my satisfaction with Redline's transmission lubes. As I said, their transmission lubes are IMO the best on the market.

Scott
 
Originally Posted By: Greasymechtech
75w80 can be a 5w20, 0w30, 5w30.... Amsoil calls their MTF a 5w30 helps narrow down the visc range it falls into.

Redline's MTL is both... a 5w30 and 75w80.
http://www.redlineoil.com/product.aspx?product=50204

GL3... not stressed enough to require GL4, but GL4 can be used.

Quit worrying. Just pick a fluid and use it.



Thanks for the info!


Originally Posted By: SLO_Town
OP:

As the original owner of my BMW and one obsessed by fanatical maintenance, I've tried several oils in my BMW. The first stuff I tried was BMW's OEM lube at 1,500 miles. At the time BMW didn't even sell it for retail sale and I had to take an empty gallon jug because they had it only in bulk. I used this for the first year or so of ownership.

I must add that from the day I took delivery my BMW had what I considered a slightly noisy first gear. BMW acknowledged the whine but said it wasn't bad enough to replace. This was one reason I changed the transmission oil so frequently. I wanted to closely monitor whether or not excessive metal was showing up in the drained fluid. Aside from the first change where there was ALOT of metal, everything has been good since and at 85K miles the transmission is absolutely perfect, though it still has a slightly noisy first gear - but less noisy than it was when I took delivery.

Then Pentosin came out with MTF 2, which they claimed was approved by BMW (and, BTW, was much different looking than the BMW OEM stuff I bought previously). I used the Pentosin for 20K or 30K miles, changing it every 5K miles or so; not because it needed it, I just wanted to key my eye on wear metals. I was still a bit concerned about the first gear whine. The Pentosin MTF 2 worked very well, perhaps ever so slightly better then the BMW OEM stuff.

Then at around 40K miles I switched to Redline MTL. I'd used Redline MTL and ATF in several other of my cars and always thought the stuff performed well. When I used MTL in my BMW the improvement was easily noticable. Shifting, though very good anyway, got even better; it being a bit less notchy. Importantly, it quieted the first gear whine slightly. The whine was still there but it was 1/3 less loud.

I tried MT-90 as well. We live in a hot summer climate and the MT-90 worked well in summer but was a every so slightly "stiff" in winter. Still doing 5K trans oil changes I pretty much stuck with MTL and was always happy. But about a year or two ago Redline introduced MT-85. I began using that and found that it gave me the best results in this particular transmission and in the climate I live in.

All of Redline's gear lubes are ester based. The only difference between the "MTL" fluids is viscosity. From thin to thick the order is MTL, MT-85, MT-90. All are GL4.

Once again I cannot overstate my satisfaction with Redline's transmission lubes. As I said, their transmission lubes are IMO the best on the market.

Scott


Thanks for the detailed report! Well California's weather is similar to Greece's. Temperatures can reach around 105 °F during the hottest days of the year and as low as 30 °F during the coldest days of winter. And if we talk about mountainous areas (I take trips to the mountains some times) they can be as low as 5 °F. In a few words temperatures go all over the place during the year, so I think I will stick to the lowest viscosity which is recommended by the the manufacturer by the way.

When I bought the car the 1st gear was significantly tighter than the others, but Motul made a difference (for all gears including the 1st). Hope that the new gear oil will be even better. I also would like to mention that Mitsubishi suggests change of gear oil every 200,000 km / 124,000 miles according to the service schedule book that I received with the car!!
 
Total BV works very well in a lot of french boxes that spec 75w-80 - in fact so well I will only use that (or Syntrans B if there's a bit more money to waste on oil, as that is a touch better but twice the price), as the shift quality with it is superb in cold weather compared to many.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: PhillipM
Total BV works very well in a lot of french boxes that spec 75w-80 - in fact so well I will only use that (or Syntrans B if there's a bit more money to waste on oil, as that is a touch better but twice the price), as the shift quality with it is superb in cold weather compared to many.


Well, if I'm going to follow Mitsubishi's service plan with 200,000 km between gear oil changes the price isn't that important. It's just one or two changes in the car's lifetime.
 
Originally Posted By: 29662
Redline MTL. I use Redline MT90 in my Toyota and I can say that it's very possibly the best gear oil I've ever used in a manual transmission.


I have MT90 in my Camry, and I need to wait for summer before I condemn it. But it's definately the wrong stuff for winter.
 
GL-1, GL-2, and GL-3, have all become obsolete and have
been replaced by GL-4... you will rarely if ever see
any of these earlier spec fluids for sale today because
GL-3 went out of production in the mid 70s.

IMPORTANT!

GL-4 has not, and is NOT superseded by GL-5!

It is confusing but GL-4 and GL-5 are two distinct classifications

You should never use any GL-5 (which may be described as
GL-4+, GL4/5, ect) in a synchromesh transmission unit.

The fluid should simply be described as GL-4 only.

Using any fluid including the 5 specification could cause
excessive wear or damage to any soft yellow metals used in the
synchronizers. Some fluid manufacturers claim their GL-5 spec fluid has advanced buffers to prevent damage but you never really know if this is accurate. Stick with a GL-4 only fluid and you will never have an issue.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
GL-1, GL-2, and GL-3, have all become obsolete and have
been replaced by GL-4... you will rarely if ever see
any of these earlier spec fluids for sale today because
GL-3 went out of production in the mid 70s.

IMPORTANT!

GL-4 has not, and is NOT superseded by GL-5!

It is confusing but GL-4 and GL-5 are two distinct classifications

You should never use any GL-5 (which may be described as
GL-4+, GL4/5, ect) in a synchromesh transmission unit.

The fluid should simply be described as GL-4 only.

Using any fluid including the 5 specification could cause
excessive wear or damage to any soft yellow metals used in the
synchronizers. Some fluid manufacturers claim their GL-5 spec fluid has advanced buffers to prevent damage but you never really know if this is accurate. Stick with a GL-4 only fluid and you will never have an issue.


Does this refer to all synchronized transmissions?

All Motul gear oils are labeled API GL-4/GL-5 though:


except from those two which are labeled only as GL-5, but you can clearly read in the description that they are suitable for both synchronized and not synchronized gearboxes:


So what's the deal? I am asking because I already use one of these oils...
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: inquirer

So what's the deal? I am asking because I already use one of these oils...


It is a better safe than sorry approach. Many GL-5 fluids have destroyed synchros. Some newer GL-5 fluids claim they are yellow metal synchro safe and they probably are. But a safe general recommendation would be to avoid them.

I think Molakule can recommend dual rated GL4/GL5 fluids that are safe for yellow metal synchros. Motul might have been one he recommended previously. I know Fuchs was one of them.
 
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