Product Review: Red Line Synthetic Heavy ShockProof Gear Oil

[TurDz]

98 240sx
57k miles
well maintained
C's Shifter


I took the advice of some members here and changed my tranny oil to try to help the symptoms of wearing synchros (3rd gear). I decided to use Heavy ShockProof by Redline. I was convinced to use this by a member of FreshAlloy who posted how much it made a difference. I know many people use MT-90, but I wanted to give this a try.

ShockProof Gear oil is offered in three flavors: SuperLight, LightWeight, and Heavy. This is what Red Line claims about their heavy version:

"The Heavy can be rated as a 75-250 Gear Oil, but has lower internal fluid friction of an SAE 75W90 (btw, this is the viscosity of the MT-90 iirc)."

Lightweight: can be rated as a 75W140 oil, but has a lower internal fluid friction of an SAE 30 motor oil.

SuperLight: can be rated as a 75W90 oil, but has the lower internal fluid friction of an ATF.

I chose Heavy because I didn't like the characteristic viscosities of the lightweight and superlight at its extreme. I'm sure those would work out very well but I know I couldn't really go wrong with trying Heavy.

Observations
Consistency is very thick. Reminds me of condensed milk but in a bright/deep red color. This stuff really likes to slide off of a surface despite it's thickness.

Just by the feel and how it pours, I could already tell this was much thicker than any tarnny oil I've seen. It's really unique; very thick but when you rub it between your fingers, it's feels as if it was new 5w30 synthetic motor oil.

Installation
I used 2.4L or 5 1/8 pint. I didn't have the access to get the fill hole open. I just did my best to let all of the old oil drain (about 30min on an angled tilt since I had two jack stands on, then 30 min flat).

I used the shifter method to fill. Since I have a C's, removal is accomplished in about 5 minutes. Just four screws and four 5mm hex bolts and it's off. I poured less than 1/8 of a bottle to test how it poured and to clear out any gunk that might still be lingering along the drain hole.

After that, I made sure the drain plug was clean and reinstalled it to moderate hand tightness. I added ~2.4L of the Heavy ShockProof.

Test Drive

Before every test, I try to be as fair as possible. I try my best to put all of my preassumtions and hear-says aside. So I drive. First thing I notice, much less noise going from gear to gear. I always had a distinct sound whenever I shifted, but now it was nearly silent. This might sound like an exaggeration, but it was probably due to the fact that shifting from 1->2 and expecially 2->3 was noticably smoother. Reminded me of the stock shifter. I thought I could never get that feeling back, but stock shifts was the only thing that came to mind. Almost made me think I had longer throws again...

I keep driving. It seems that I was still breaking in the fluid (getting it into every possible crevice). It may be my imagination, but I felt that the shifts were continuing to improve in smoothness, but it's not a 100% good thing, since I noticed a loss of some mechanical feel. On the other hand, another plus though was the lesser amount of effort I needed to change gears. Compared to my old tranny oil....pretty drastic change. I made sure that these comparisions were as accurate as possibly by driving to warm the fluid and conciously observing how shifts felt with the old tranny oil.


Conclusion (Cliff Notes, haha)

[b]editlease read the long-term post review at the end of this thread...overall, this is not a good daily driver tranny fluid. It takes a certain amount of time for the fluid to heat up. If it is cold, it will cause some grinding or difficult shifting.[b]

I don't know the long-term effects of this fluid, but if you're planning on changing tranny oils, GET THIS oil. This stuff overall is amazing, and it's a great bang-for-the-buck maintainence job. Shifting is definately smoother. I've lost some of the original mechanical feel that I had with the C's short stroke shifter but it's a great tradeoff since it takes less effort going into each gear now. Almost makes it feel soft when I hit the end of a shift... very cushiony. That is not an exaggeration, going into each gear seems much more comforting in my eyes and gives me the feeling that I'm not doing any harm to my tranny. 3rd to 4th gear in particular is the one that has noticably gone softer.

I really hope this will fix my 3rd gear synchro problem. The problem usually happens when the car has been running long/hard for a while, so I will definately give an update with this stuff in the car. One reason why this oil may feel so great is my oil could have possibly been really messed up, or underfilled, or just old. The shavings that were on the magnet resembed an ice cave with those spikey icicles hanging down from the ceiling. Seemed pretty bad, but at the same time I felt that the old tranny oil really should have been replaced earlier.

for now... time to go drive again