[DeTomaso] Steering rack adventures/ oil specs

[asajay at asajay.com]

In a nutshell:

It gets the car off the road sooner, so you have to buy a new car.
Or buy new parts.

Either way, they make money, unless like Jack, you figure things out  
and boycott by simply not buying into it anymore.

Asa Jay
<Damn Jack, you really knew some people for a while didn't you>

Quoting JDeRyke at aol.com:

> In a message dated 8/4/08 6:11:11 PM, adin at frontier.net writes:
>
>
>> What do we think of the new trend (ok, not so new) of specifying water thin
>> oil in transmissions?
>>
>> Do we know more than the engineers?  If one were to use "better" (my term)
>> lubricant, will it void the warranty?
>>
> Not a matter of knowing more; this was strictly a bean-counter move. In 1982,
> GM started adding ATF, a hydraulic oil with no load-carrying additives, to 4
> speed trannys. The zero-wt oil dropped the internal drag enough to raise GMs
> CAFE (corporate average fuel mileage) rating. And the few performance owners
> that fragged their trannys and differentials   were cheerfully   
> warranty-replaced
> but didn't significantly affect The General's bottom line. I bought one of
> these with 12,000 lightly miles on it and 6 months later seized the tranny in
> 2nd gear at an autocross. I drove across town with the gearstick in   
> Neutral and
> on teardown, it took a torch and every bit of my 12-ton press to break the
> normally-rotating 2nd gear free of the mainshaft.
> I used to have phone numbers at some of the Detroit factories, so I called
> and asked what the idea was of running ATF in a std trans. The engineer that
> answered the phone at the Powertrain Division tried to tell me   
> they're redone the
> internal clearances and metallurgy for ATF. As it turned out, the Z-28 trans
> was a Saginaw 4-speed; when I told him I'd mic-ed everything, found no
> differences so I repaired it with NOS gears from a 1966 Corvair Saginaw with
> "non-upgraded' gears and 90-wt gear lube, and   it ran just fine   
> except cooler, there
> was no answer. The next time I tried calling (when the differential went out
> at 26,000 miles- 1 K out of warranty), the phone number had been   
> changed.... At
> least three Nor-Cal Corvette owners also lost trannys and one diff until the
> news of the wrong lube got around.
> FWIW, I have now lost three (3.0) Chev posi differentials- 2 in brand new
> cars and one in the low mileage '82 Z-28. I am now convinced that GM  
>  cannot set
> up a posi differential; and the next new car I buy will NOT be a GM.
> As far as warranty goes, do you really want the thing fixed exactly like the
> one that broke? On the latest- Judy's '97 Z-28, I didn't even bother with the
> warranty. I took it to a performance shop to fix it right for $1000. The shop
> owner said they saw an awful lot of this stuff. FWIW- J DeRyke
>
>
>
> **************
> Looking for a car that's sporty, fun and fits in your budget?
> Read reviews on AOL Autos.
>
> (http://autos.aol.com/cars-BMW-128-2008/expert-review?ncid=aolaut00050000000017   
> )
> _______________________________________________
>
> Detomaso Forum Managed by POCA
>
> Archive Search Engine Now Available at http://www.realbig.com/detomaso/
>
> DeTomaso mailing list
> DeTomaso at list.realbig.com
> http://list.realbig.com/mailman/listinfo/detomaso
>