Road Rage

After Gernby's glowing support of GM Suncromesh FRICTION MODIFIED (FM), this morning I went to 3 GM dealers (2 Chevy, 1 Pontiac) to buy some. At two dealers, I have a coporate account, since I buy a lot of parts for Corvette restorations.

Anyway, none of them had it. That is one hting. Two denied there was such a thing and gave me that hapless "get a clue, pal" look.

The best was yet to come. One guy actually went to talk to the techs, and they said "We know there is some stuff called FM, but we just put THIS in".

The "this" was a small bottle of positraction additive for limited slip differentials. It certainly is a FM'ier, but unless they are tribology geniuses by instinct, it is no way the properr mix.

Point is, if you had a GM truck (small ones) in for service, they would use the regular GMS, and then throw a bottle of the posi-additive. Your car would not have the right fluid in it, and it would most likely be a $100 job if it were a dime. And let's assume you start start complaining of bad shift quality, which was not their when you brought it in. What happens? Right, you will get that hapless "get a clue, pal" look, and may begin the cycle of "we'll take a whack at it, and end up with a new tranny, at your expense".

And it all started because the people who are supposed to be the experts are not, and then make up solutions that they know are not truthful, but figure a customer can be hog-washed into believing that boar mucous is the best lubricant (well, they are right there.....).

Phooey - I'm buying mail order, but I have downloaded the relevant material I need, and will ask them to have some in stock next time, or I will go to the GM (a pal of mine). Not so much to be a rat, but to help the next guy who comes along earnestly believeing that he will get expert service.

fly_S2K

That's funny, cause the EXACT same thing happened to me about a week ago when I went to go get some GMSFM as well. After about 15mins of preaching to the parts guy telling him there WAS such a thing, he searched up his chem book and found it.

modifry

Is there a GM part number we could ask for?

I'm due for another tranny change and I'm looking to try the GMSFM myself, but it would be nice to have some ammo when I go looking for it.

.

bigpurp

Is THIS the same stuff as GMSFM?

F1s2000

I do my own work as well.

Nobody

Whew--when they looked at me with chagrin I thought I had made a mistake and walked out empty handed. Where can you buy it online?

forsaken

Roadrage, after reading your old posts I thought you hated the oil since it was for truck trannies. What made you think of trying this ? Anyway I decided to use MTF for now (to be safe) and my grinding went away. It'll be interesting how this GMFM turns out. Keep us posted !

Oh also, when I was at my honda dealer I figured I might as well check out the 90W diff oil. Since I remember reading it from the older thread that honda are selling these by quarts now. The parts dept wasn't able to find the part number, after checking for approx 20 minutes one of their ppl gave me the VTM (LOL) gallon. I then told them that its the wrong fluid, they did give me the "gimme a break look btw" then they decided to call Honda Illoinois (it was suppose to be their main parts supplier or something). Honda illonois told them to give me the VTM as well. I just got fed up and left.

Its sad to see our dealers not knowing what fluid to use on the cars they sell. Im using Mobile 75-90 for now, might switch to LE soon.

hokiemax

Yup thats the same stuff !!

or you could go to a GM dealer and order it. Here is the part number.
GM part# 12377916

But next time I need more of this fluid, I'm gonna order it from Hardtop guy because I want to suppport his business. He if offering TREMENDOUS convenience to the S2000 community by having the AC Delco fluid readily available.

If you are in Northern Virginia, Mike Pallone Chevy in springfield had the FM bottles on the shelf !! Thats where I got mine couple weeks ago.

ccarnel

I have to agree... always do you own mechanical work if you can. If you are fairly mechanicaly inclined and have the right tools there isn't much that you can't do on your own.

My sister's sentra went into the shop because there was an oil pan gasket leak (dealership charged upwards of 300 bucks to fix. It began leaking again and me and dad decided to tackle the challenge over a weekend (as i informed dad that a tube of rtv was about 5 bucks. Anyways... afterwards it became obvious that the mechanic had stripped out 4-5 out of the 15 or so bolts holding the oilpan on and didn't bother to retap... instead some rtv was holding the bolts in. Not only that but no one had scraped the old factory rtv off when reinstalling the oil pan, but had just squeezed out more rtv on top of the old. Needless to say... the pan has not leaked again since the job was done right the second time.

Soulstice

Same thing happened to me. I went to a GM dealership looking for the FM oil and the guy thought I was crazy. So I came back the next day with an exact part number and he had to apologize profusely. Of course, I didn't buy the stuff from him...


-Deep