dehning

Mine is/was a sad little '02 that I'm nursing back to life. I've got almost everything significant fixed, just did the transmission fluid and I was surprised how easy it was, I'm normally a sportbike guy and this is the first time I have ever replaced transmission fluid on any of my cars

Based on the recommendations of others, I used Pennzoil GM Syncromesh. I used the $9 pump from Advance Autoparts and it worked well, if a little fatiguing.

The only thing that surprised me is that my car took pretty close to 2 full quarts, the OP said he used 1.6 quarts. All seems to be working well though.

Thanks for the info OP!

alSpeed2k

^was your car level when you filled the tranny?

s2000_sideways

Good write up, my shifter wouldn't release and pop back up out of the " down" position. I did a trans flush and it seems to be "releasing" about 50% of the time now. Soo, I'm hoping that it'll work itself in and I will regresse the shaft with high temp grease And I hope it all works itself out. Thanks again good thorough write up . I could fit an 17mm socket with my torque on it tho so I just did it to what I thought was ok. It has no load at all so I just did a bit tighter than by hand, since 33 lbs isn't a whole lot

redlineracing

IMO....The Honda MTF & the Amsoil MTF are the 2 I recommend.It seems to me that the Amsoil lasts a little longer.Neither should go more than 1 yr or 10k miles.

\rlr
Carolina

P1h3r1e3d13

Holy cow! Is this confirmation bias, or is shifting really that much smoother now?

I'm at 82k miles or so, of which <2k is from me. I don't have all the maintenance records from the previous owners, so I don't know whether or when the trans fluid had been changed. The shifter was kinda notchy and balky. In fact, it's the only thing that really disappointed me about acquiring my dream car.

Thanks to this tutorial, I just changed whatever was in there for fresh Honda MTF. The old stuff looked pretty much like the new, just a bit browner. I didn't see any metal. I didn't think the two liquids would act very differently.
But I just came back from the check ride and the shifter is a thing of beauty now! So smooth, no kicking back at my hand, none of this “did I make it all the way into second?” stuff, just slick and light and positive.

Now I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's road trip!

P1h3r1e3d13

By the way, great tutorial, thanks! My 2¢ on the process:

• Getting it raised enough and level is really tricky in a sloped driveway without a proper floor jack. I ended up putting a scrap of 2×4 between the diff and the small pad of my bottle jack. What do you guys do about the jack/jacking point interface?
• My fill bolt was really, really stuck. It took a lot of hammer taps on the head, an 18" length of pipe on my socket wrench handle, and tons of grunting to break it loose. Seriously, I spent at least two hours on it.
• The torque wrench was a really good investment. I wouldn't feel comfortable finishing the job by guesswork.

andrew87890

anyone use motul 75w-90 in the there tranny?

Voltaire

Excellent right up. Completed this on my AP2 this afternoon. Dinging my hand up because I believe the bolt was over torqued from the stealership when they last changed it.

alSpeed2k

I use to hurt my hand quite frequently working under my car, now I almost always use a mallet to give a light tap to the wrench to prevent this.

wakathi

Had the transmission fluid and rear differential fluid changed after about 30k miles.
Used Honda MTF for the transmission. During flush, the old transmission oil looked like new! Got it replaced anyway. The gear change does seem smoother now.
Thanks!