My colleague Jason Torchinsky is in a bind. His Nissan Pao is deeply, deeply ruined because Jason failed to do the very first thing I do when I take ownership of a car. Here’s what I mean.
“I really need a new five-speed manual transmission, I think, because … I made a mistake, and I know that makes me a bad person” Jason just said, sulking right next to me here at Monterey Car Week, more specifically at the Maserati House. This place:
But poor Jason isn’t a bad person; he’s being a bit dramatic, and maybe just a bit sad. Because his Nissan Pao’s transmission is toast after Jason forgot to change its transmission fluid.
“I feel like I was taking good care of the car, but I never thought to change the transmission oil,” Jason — whose Scion xB’s transmission input shaft bearing failed after he never changed it’s transmission oil — told me.
Look at this cute little Pao whose transmission began failing by popping out of gear, then started whining, and now will not shift at all.
So this brings me to the very first thing I do when I buy a new car: I change its oils. All of its oils. In fact, when I bought Jason a 1989 Ford F-150 a few years ago, I made him change the gearbox oil before he drove the truck back home. If you don’t believe me, here’s a quote from Jason’s article about his F-150’s inaugural journey:
The first thing David demanded I do was to change the gear oil in that old tractor-like T18 four-speed transmission, and since he’s the man who coughed up the money for the truck, I have to listen, so Otto and I found an empty industrial facility’s parking lot and crept into a corner where I could perform the oil change.
The fact is, with manual transmission oil, you can’t easily inspect the quality or quantity of the fluid (since there’s no dipstick), which is critical to the longevity of the system. If your transmission fluid is low or dirty, you could find yourself with the huge pain in the ass job of trying to replace a Japan-built five-speed. It’s just not worth it.
I feel the same way about any automotive component that has bearings in it. The differentials, the engine, the wheel bearings and tie rod ends/ball joints — all should get new oil or grease as soon as possible after you buy a car. If the car is working well when you buy it, and isn’t making any strange noises, the single best way to keep it that way is to just change all the oils and grease all the joints. It can be a pain in the ass, sure, but it’s just not worth foregoing. Those fluids are just too important to the longevity of your engine/transmission/differential/transfer case/suspension pieces.
Spend the afternoon with a bunch of oil and grease, a drain pan, a pump, and a bunch of papertowels and hand-cleaner. The satisfaction you’ll feel afterwards knowing that your vehicle likely has another five years without a major mechanical failure will be worth it.
I also like to inspect my coolant and brake fluid, check my rubber hoses and belts and tires, and just generally look over the machine. But, more than anything, my top priority when it comes to the maintenance of a vehicle I just bought is: Get fresh fluids in it. Just do it.
“Change the damn oil in your damn manual transmission,” Jason just told me here at the Maserati House. “Don’t be like me, kids. Don’t make the mistakes I’ve made. It hurts.”
Profound.
A wise person once told me, and I’ve repeated it to many others, that fluids are cheaper than parts. This mindset has served me well over many years and many sh*tbox cars.
“Baseline” every used car you buy and want to drive for a long time. No records of a fluid being changed? Change it. All oils, bleed your brake fluid, change coolant, any grease points, etc. Service the brakes too! Regrease the slider pins and inspect the pads while you’re bleeding the hydraulics. The older the car, the more important this is. A few hours spent poking around the car while you do all this maintenance is a great time to find issues before they develop.
Then write down all the maintenance you’ve performed with date and mileage in a little notebook and toss it into the glovebox.
Is he still driving around with a lower control arm bushing made from rubber hose? Seems like this is a pattern…
I’m with you David, it’s cheap insurance. I change it on my non car equipment as soon as I take possession, and even changed it on my 8k mile old Miata (Mazda has been noted as under filling both the diff and transmission from factory, and i found this to be true on my change.). Total cost was maybe $70. Definitely worth it for my peace of mind.
Personally, I doubt the transmission was ruined because he did not change the gear oil. Manual transmissions (and axles for that matter) are not particularly hard on their oil.The majority of vehicles out there will go their entire lives (200k+) without the transmission or differential oil ever being changed. Running out of oil is a different story, however.
Anyways, the transmission is probably easily repairable. I had a Nissan FWD manual transmission fail, and it was because a bearing let go. A dead giveaway is “whining”. As one of the main shaft bearings start to fail, the various gears are no longer in proper mesh and will start to make noise. As the bearing gets bad enough, your shift forks and what not will no longer be in alignment.
I bet if you have the transmission taken out and ripped apart, you will find just a bad bearing need to be changed.
“with manual transmission oil, you can’t easily inspect the quality or quantity of the fluid (since there’s no dipstick)”
What on earth are you talking about? The full plug is there, and you have a pinky finger. Easy.
I do not preventatively change every fluid in a new used car. That’s a really good way to blow $300 and a whole afternoon of work on fluid changes that aren’t actually needed. And $300 is usually a large fraction of what I paid for the car in the first place.
I do thoroughly check and inspect every fluid, and replace the ones that need replacing. It is very possible and usually easy to check every fluid on the car.
This is bad advice.
Gear oil smells bad and differentials and transmissions almost never break. I have changed gear oil before, but now believe this is just something I should never worry about. I feel better now.
Maybe I’ll work on old cars again. But I, like Marie Kondo, have decided to simplify. That stuff under the hood. It will work until it doesn’t.
(I do change the motor oil and air filter, however.)
Ouch Jason, seems like good lesson
Quick search turned up this $1800 89-91 Nissan Pao MT transaxle…
https://jp-carparts.com/nissan/partlist.php?maker=nissan&type=73&cartype=1&fig=320
So, cheap fix then…
Ha I strongly suspect you’re being a wee bit sarcastic which I can appreciate.
I stopped myself from making a ‘holy crap what an expensive mistake’ like comment bc for some people an $1800 cost and heck let’s double it to account for shipping and install so $3600 is something they wouldn’t even flinch at.
On the other end of the spectrum, roughly 40% of households in the US couldn’t pay a $400 unexpected expense And this ‘unexpected expense’ will end up between 5-10x
Following Jason’s writing for easily +10 years now, I strongly suspect this will be a materially significant monetary cost for him. I didn’t realize the same mistake was made with the Xb, so this is 2x as sad.
I do appreciate this mistake being shares here bc besides houses; cars are the 2nd biggest expense items for the vast majority of people and it is rare that people share their mistakes so openly.
With a small amount of luck maybe Jason can leverage this site to negotiate / barter a super low to free ‘parts from Japan’ price in exchange for advertising for the selling parts supplier by writing 1-3 follow up articles on the process of acquiring the needed new / new to him parts and the fix itself, which could lend itself to a great car repair YouTube video as well.
If I was in his shoes I certainly would try this myself.
Isn’t that the same transmission used in the Nissan Micra? If so there should be millions of those in wreck yards….
That drawing with Otto, Jason and The Marshall is incredibly beautiful.
Just that.
Friends don’t horsewhip friends in front of a crowd… but if they do something like that and then do what’s needed to put it all behind y’all, more content.
Butseriously, I would like to see a postmortem. And a fluid sample. There’s a good chance this started before it left the home island.
April Fool’s! Manuals don’t have fluid! Just kidding…oh no, this is so sad…you have got to fix it…that car is so awesome! It’s all the deers fault!
My Harley changes it’s own oil thank you very much, I just have to make sure to keep topping it off. 😀
But seriously yes, change your fluids per the scheduled maintenance intervals.
This is sage advice. My previous car, an E90 328xi MT, had the transfer case fluid run low, and it started to whine. It only had 2 oz out of the 16 oz or so capacity drain out when I finally changed it. New fluid reduced but not eliminated the noise.
A deer took that car out before it failed though, so I never had to deal with the consequences.
My current car, an E61 535xi MT, had all the fluids changed within the first year, during the first major service I did. I now try to do them all every 60k mi/100k km, which I think is the typical OEM interval for oil changes even when BMW says they’re lifetime fills.
Despite all that, the E61 had the transfer case blow up on it (the clutch pack actuator broke I believe) not long after the oil change – no warning on it. It’s just a heavier, more powerful car. The transmission and differentials are still good though, despite going through 2 each of front and rear driveshafts and front right CV axles by the time I’ve not 256k mi.
AWD is awesome – the E61 is a boss in the snow – but I think the vehicle that I’ll get to take over DD duties (I don’t ever want to get rid of the E61) will be 2WD. In retrospect a 528i would’ve been great. Too bad you could never get the E61 in that configuration in North America.
Obviously jason has some good excuses for putting things off lately. Was his heart just reminding him to “change the fluids?” (Too soon?)
Where I get stuck on this rule is automatic transmissions. Officially, my GX470 has “lifetime” trans fluid. A lot of guys do change it, but I bought it with 170k and am now up to 205k. Is it worth the risk of changing the fluid knowing that they sometimes nuke when you do that? Or do I just accept that I will eventually be doing a rebuild because it never got changed?
A drain & fill (vs a thorough flush that replaces the vast majority) is the prudent move if you’re doing it for the first time on a high mileage automatic.
Yeah. I just have to find friends willing to help me do it because no shop will.
You (generic third person “you here” assumes “you” are able bodied and have a minor mechanical ability), Can replace the trans fluid on an auto trans yourself. I did it myself on our old (it’s a 2004) family hauler (Toyota Sienna) on a Sat. afternoon.
Jack the front of the car up, place some jack stands under sturdy stuff. Then Crack the Trans fill hole open 1st to make sure you can get it open
Than Crack the drain hole and dump the old Trans fluid in to a clean pan.
Transfer the old fluid in to containers so you can measure how much you took out
Next reinstall the drain plug and refill the trans with the same amount of new auto trans fluid, start the car and run it through each gear.
Then repeat this procedure 2 more times and you will have replaced approx. 90% of all the old fluid
> Crack the Trans fill hole open 1st to make sure you can get it open
Than Crack the drain hole and dump the old Trans fluid in to a clean pan.
This is the best advice I’ve ever read.
Every other year on my XJ I’ll drain as much as I can out of the trans and then replace that amount. Then I’ll drive it a few miles / days and do it again. After that, the fluid looks brand new. This isn’t with that lifetime fill stuff though which is very expensive compared to just the run of the mill Dexron you can get in an Auto Zone branded bottle. Last summer I did have the trans serviced by a shop. They said it looked almost new inside despite having 200k on it.
BUT WAIT! This story ain’t over yet!
https://www.amayama.com/en/catalogs/nissan/pao/1-hatchback-right-1989-1553/chassis-and-transmission-7
Not at NAPA AFAIK, but Japanese domestic stuff is out there.
I’m more experienced finding motorcycle stuff, but since the interenets it’s a simpler game.
https://www.megazip.net/zapchasti-dlya-avtomobilej/nissan/pao-2102/pk10-6114/pk10-620332/transmission-gear-7801620
woof
ever since the article on the i3’s lack of a gear oil fill port I’ve been wondering if I need to undertake the ordeal of changing the oil
Thing has 200K km…
With the photo of the Pao I thought you were going to wax poetic about installing some deer repellent to every car you own.
I’ve learned this lesson. Two years ago the transmission in my BMW e36 M3 started to make some noise. I ignored it, continued to drive it for months, autocross raced it with dual drivers frequently, even went and did a brutal Pro Solo event with the wining transmission. One day I figured it was getting worse sounding so I went and checked the trans fluid level, it had very little in it. It had all leaked out through the output shaft seal.
Well shucks I thought. Put fluid in it, then drove it a few days, flushed it and put more fluid in. It continued to scream with a sound that sounded like a bad output shaft bearing. However it still shifted perfectly with no change in performance, just noisy. Now a year after putting fluid in it and driving it 10k miles it has changed noises and just makes a hum. Still shifts the same and my twin brother and I still hoon it at many autocrosses. We avoided catastrophe but it’s still not great.
Luckily if it goes, it will give me a reason to change the original clutch which is somehow still holding in after 196k miles.
BMW clutches have astounding life, especially considering how they tend to be driven. I think the dual-mass flywheel contributes?