ok so when the car car is cold it is hard to get into reverse and grinds into 2nd gear. when it is warm it is fine... there is a drain plug for the tranny so i took it off and no fluid came out!!! so went to piston ring and filled it with 3 litres of gear oil 75-90 which were the specs for the car maybe put , now it will grind into 2nd and 3rd when it is warm now as well. any answers to this?

 

If there was no oil in the trans, then the likelihood is you have lots of metal shavings left over in the case. I would drain it again (save the 75/90, keep it clean, it's expensive) and refill with with something like HD 30w oil just to flush it out, drive it around for a week or so, and refill it again with the 75-90 after straining with a piece of cheese cloth. Probably your axle seals are bad, that's why there is no oil. Check for leaks, replace the seals.

 

After you get the trans case cleaned out, and the seals to stop leaking, you could add some Amsoil Synchromesh fluid. I've never used it, but I've heard people who swear by it for making your transmission shift better.

http://www.amsoil.com/StoreFront/mtf.aspx

 

that doesnt explain why its shifting worse now... would overfilling it cause that?

 

If your case was filled with metal bits, then putting oil in it would swirl around all that metal, as opposed to no oil and the metal just sitting at the bottom. It certainly does explain the hard shifting. Overfilling shouldn't make it harder to shift.

But don't believe me, dump out the oil and look for metal in the pan, and metal stuck to the magnetic drain plug. There should be plenty.

 

After thinking about it, if you have lots of metal in the oil, you probably should drain and refill a bunch of times until you don't get any metal anymore.

 

ok so if this is the case, is there anything else i can run in it other than gear oil? it is pretty expensive.

 

I told you, buy HD 30w non detergent motor oil. It's like the cheapest stuff you can buy. I used to use it in my old Volvo 4speed w/overdrive, as specified. So I know it will work fine.

If you really wanna be a skin-flint, then just use used motor oil. You just need something to flush out all that metal.

It's surprising that it still works at all, so anything is better than running around with all that metal in the case. It's like you threw a handful of sand in there. There's no filter, it just circulates around, eats up the syncros and gears.