TR synchros life expectancy

until now I never had a wear out synchro at a passenger car, only on a truck
so I think you may not worry about this.
all gearboxes ( from flat 12 ferrari ) until now I repaired I not even got close to the wear out size

 

Depends. If your mindless idiot that doesn't know how to correctly shift then you can bank on them being gone quickly. If you maintain civility when shifting, you can have them indefinitely. All depends on the nut behind the wheel. As a TR owner you should act accordingly.

 

Seems to be a rather self explanatory question. I simply look at the question and provide a factual response. Most oowners here know the limits of their TR. It is why most here work on their TR. They know their cars better than anybody. In fact as a group, I think they are the most dedicated and informational group of owners here. They live for this particular Ferrari.

For us.....flat 12's rule!

 

What’s wrong with driving while wearing white gloves? Helps keep the leather nice and clean.

While 62,000 km is not a lot, in 31 years, my car has seen many owners prior to my tenure and a lot of abuse by idiots (hopefully slightly less by the current idiot) without any adverse effects on shifting quality.

With correct and clean gear oil and a properly adjusted linkage, it remains one of the best shifting cars I have enjoyed. Blipping on the downshift is one of the joys of the car, and a reason I would not trade it for a paddle shift equipped car.

 

it is a car to work and have fun with the "old" technic

 

double clutching is good for non sychroniced gears.
the rings are so good material and if you do regualry gearbox oil change I see no problem to occure
may be steve or paul or brian may chime in? they have a lot of repair experience

 

I had a friend with an 86 TR that had over 250,000 miles on it when he passed away and the engine and trans had never been worked on outside of routine stuff and he was also just starting on his 3rd clutch at that point.

Even when new I had a lot of them apart for syncro replacement. Poor gear oil choices coupled with impatient drivers were causing a glazing of the syncro surface that inhibited their action. Seemed tied to use with oils high in sulpher additives used as an anti wear agent and with positraction additives that also inhibit the syncros from doing what they need to do. One of the reasons I use none of that stuff in mine even if the diff does chatter a little. In their first 10 years or so when they were being driven a lot I had one apart seemed like every month. Its when I started lapping the syncro rings. The iron rings are so hard and as they are made have very inconsistant contact on the gear surface. It exacerbates the problem. When you take one apart with under 20,000 miles it is very typical to see less than total contact. It take forever to seat them naturally. One of the big differences you see jumping from a low mile TR to a high or medium mile TR is how much better they shift with age. I think we have better gear oil choices too. Synthetics and being able to choose non Posi oils has been a big help.

I think Joe is right too in frequent changes. I am no oil engineer but just from observation of them since 1985 they seem tough on the oil additves in the sense it degrades quickly in these cars. Its a big heavy duty looking unit and while in many cars I don't think twice about running gear oil a very long time I wouldn't dream of it in one of these. I have seen far too many get seriously F'd up and most often they have lack of frequent changes in common. That sucks too because they hold over 2 gallons of oil.

 

Interesting. Non LSD additive oil. I took my differential apart and the plates looked decent at 62,000 km. I run Motul 75w90 with LSD additive currently (and it shifts great) but you have me thinking about replacing it.

Do you typically replace gearbox oil on a time or mileage basis?

 

Time. They dont get very hot very often and condensation in them can be a problem. I have seen damage to everything in them above the oil level from that too. Very common in FWD vehicles in the front drive components.
You are in the desert so not a big deal but if we went by mileage the oil would never get changed.

My job is to keep clients cars from needing big repairs. I am pretty good at it but the shop always has several big jobs as a first visit that were easily avoided. Fixing is a lot more expensive than maintaining.

 

No. If the side plate is removed you can see them. if moved back all the way twords the gear there should be a gap left between the rear flat surface of the syncro and the front face of where the dog teeth are on the gear. Big gap good, no gap bad. You can just reach in with 2 long skinny screw drivers and push the syncro back. There might a spec for the gap size in the shop manual.

 

all gearboxes I did until now the gap has been more than 0,9 mm. so no need to replace the synchros as ferrari says when more than 30.000 km

 

What's your fav oil for the Boxer gearbox?
For cone synchro's, I have had good luck with Redline synthetic products w/o LSD additive, and for Porsche type baulk rings, I prefer Swepco petroleum. Although, I'm using the Swepco in the Boxer, and all works well without LSD chatter.

 

Which version BB? Not all were the same. I admit, I used to use Swepco too but I came to my senses. For Porsche syncros Swepco is exactly wrong. It uses sulphur based additives by the bucketful.

 

BBi (Aren't the synchros the same from 365BB to 512BBi's?)

I recall the high end Porsche supply places made a big deal out of SWEPCO. I always accepted it as a high end petroleum oil.
So which lube do you run in BBi's & Dino's?

Would you put the Redline in both? (Without the LSD additive). I know Redline MTL is strongly suggested to not use in a Ferrari gearbox. I called Redline on that one.

 

Early 365 had Porsche style syncros. Swepco is a high end product but like anything else it is not the best for everything, particularly their gear oil. Swepco had a salesman, a very good one, I knew him very well. He was very into European performance cars and worked the Ferrari and Porsche shops and dealers around the country very heavily doing very interesting and convincing demonstrations on how his oil was better. He did a great job and many are still very convinced years after he passed away. It has a very high sulpher content and why it has such a strong smell. Well in all the years since synthetics have become so good and have more modern anti wear additives it has become very obvious to anyone not blindered by Johns sales pitch that they are very much better oils for our needs and transmissions dont need 10 miles of warming up before you can shift them.

I used to have a shop right down the road from Redline head quarters Spoke to them extensively. Their position is simple. Ferrari specifies GL5 in all transmissions since the 308 and Redline just like any other oil manufacturer will never go against that position.....period.

In the next breath they tell you GL5 is not for transmissions, it was made for hypoid differentials. BB and TR have hypoid differentials but not all Ferraris do. I would not suggest MTL for BB/TR, nor would I tell anyone to ignore the requirement for GL5 in any of the other cars either. But I will tell you I have used GL4 in my own 328 for years and I have clients who have used MTL GL4 oil in 308s Ffor over 100,000 miles and all they have ever needed was a few oil leaks fixed. I am also aware of many Challenge race cars that used nothing but MTL for their entire racing career. The BB/TR/512 gear box does have some ring and pinion wear issues and despite the fact I am pretty sure the GL4 would be better for shift quality I don't think it would be a good choice nor have I ever heard anyone recommend it for those cars.

 

I very much appreciate your expert advice on this forum.

 

Thank you for taking the time on this topic. So the synthetic that's best is the GL5 Redline 75W/90? For both synchro types? I've never tried the synthetics in any of my Porsche synchro boxes. I will give this a try. I use the Redline for 308 boxes and have been happy with the synchro and LSD function. I thought petroleum might offer a bigger margin for the Boxer hypoid bevel gears, but it makes sense the technology has evolved - Thank you again!

I had a Fiat with a big 3rd gear shifting issue - (It wouldn't fully allow slider to engage). Very frustrating! I went back in there many times and finally, I caught the perimeter synchro spring contact detail in the 246 Dino book and paid particular attention on the next R&R&R, and this seemed to fix the problem. To not pull the box out, I experimented with oils. I even tried a moly gearbox additive which helped - but only a little, and weakened the other synchro function of course.

 

I have no idea whats best. Results are inconsistent to some degree. Mobile 1 works pretty well in the few cars I have put it in. Steve Magnusson uses Ravenol and it works well in his car. There is no fix all. Usually no posi additive is noticeably better, sometimes not. So many have some level of shifter adjusting issue its impossible to tell. I do have extensive Swepco experience and in a large number of cars cold shifting was just awful. We rebuilt a few transmissions during that period with Porsche style syncros and could not run Swepco in them. You could not shift them. For a while Royal Purple was all the rage. I had a client who asked for it. He was the only one who ever came back a week later and asked me to drain it back out.

 

You would not believe how many 911 porsche owners continue to mouth this Swepco myth at Cars and Coffee. My shop buddy was convinced of this stuff and put it in his 84 Carrera and complained to me of its ****ty shifting. I told him "get that old junk out, put in Redline MTL" and after that his shifting problems just went away on the first drive. He is now mouthing the MTL brand at the Cars and Coffee for Porsche.

 

So Bryan, you are not normally this verbose. Or maybe English is not my first language. I did not come out at the end of this post with "what to put in a 1988 Testarossa gearbox?" MTL? GL4? GL5?