Red gear oil?
- Thread starter RLDSL
- Start date
sle2115
NRA LIFE MEMBER
Red Line made some red gear oils as well as Lucas. Should be easy to tell the difference just from consistency though.
LittleBlue
Registered User
Color, smell and consistency may help identify, at least the majority of the make up. What’s it smell like? Is it clear red or dirty red? How thick is it and temp? Maybe it’s not worth worrying about. When in doubt change it out or was that whip it out. 
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.Color, smell and consistency may help identify, at least the majority of the make up. What’s it smell like? Is it clear red or dirty red? How thick is it and temp? Maybe it’s not worth worrying about. When in doubt change it out or was that whip it out.
It looked and felt more like atf, but could have been a light synthetic oil. Definitely not a petroleum gear oil. I guess I need to crawl under and give it the sniff test.
Since there's gear oil in the tranny, I'm of the mind that someone read the specs backwards and put gear oil in the tranny and atf in the rear instead of the other way around.
--------Robert
LittleBlue
Registered User
Hi RLDSL,
I remember when I purchased a 1/2 ton gas job w/4 speed. Check the fluid levels and all seem ok, gear oil in both. Checked the manual and it called for ATF in the trans and gear oil in the diff. So drained both and put ATF in the trans and gear oil in the diff. Dam did that trans leak, guess that’s why they put gear oil in it. I drained the trans out and put gear oil in it, little over 740,000 on the trans now no problems, did replace the motor once. I don't do much north driving so temps didn't make shafting a problem. I remember back in the old days we used to run 30wt motor oil in all the 13 speed and diff on the Mack 18 yard dumps we had. I guess they leaked so dam bad it was cheaper then fixing and running gear oil. So if you do drain the transmission and put ATF in and it leaks you'll know why the gear oil was in it.
I remember when I purchased a 1/2 ton gas job w/4 speed. Check the fluid levels and all seem ok, gear oil in both. Checked the manual and it called for ATF in the trans and gear oil in the diff. So drained both and put ATF in the trans and gear oil in the diff. Dam did that trans leak, guess that’s why they put gear oil in it. I drained the trans out and put gear oil in it, little over 740,000 on the trans now no problems, did replace the motor once. I don't do much north driving so temps didn't make shafting a problem. I remember back in the old days we used to run 30wt motor oil in all the 13 speed and diff on the Mack 18 yard dumps we had. I guess they leaked so dam bad it was cheaper then fixing and running gear oil. So if you do drain the transmission and put ATF in and it leaks you'll know why the gear oil was in it.
Yeah, that's kind of what I've been concerned about. I went ahead and ordered a jug of Auto RX and am going to run a bit of that stuff in the tranny and rear end for a while to revive the seals a bit before changing out the fluids.
If I had any sense at all, I would have put a new input shaft seal in the tranny while I had the engine out, but there were no signs of leakage.
--------Robert
