Today I did my very first MTX flush. I've had the car about two years now and it has never been done. Since I bought the car I've noticed a grind going into 2nd in cold weather. This grind has recently found it's way into warmer weather so it's time to do something about it.
I didn't use any of the suggested coctails posted all over this site, just some regular old MTX fluid. I don't even remember the weight but I know it was right.
Started off a pretty frustrating experience. I performed the flush at my parents house because they have a driveway and my ramps. I knew I had my tool box there but didn't realize my Allen wrenches weren't in it. This proved to be very frustrating. I had to get into the zone, autozone, to get a new set.
The "how to" was very straight forward and the pics helped a lot. After I returned to mom's house with the 2nd set of allen wrenches I've bought in the past year, I checked to make sure I could loosen the filler plug to avoid being stuck in a truly sucky situation. No go. I was unable to get enough leverage on the 3 inch shaft of the allen wrench to loosen the plug. I then started going crazy believing that maybe the plug is of the revearse thread variety. Finally comming to my senses I realized this was impossible and trying to loosen the plug by tightening it would add some suck to an already sucky situation. After noticing the how to in the "tranaxle" section, I saw that the 8mm allen bit used with a ratchet would have worked a lot better. I didn't have an 8mm bit. I did however have an 8mm socket that fit snugly around the allen wrench and connected that to a ratchet wrench that helped a lot with the leverage thing.
Next matter of sucktitude: the fluid pump.
It didn't fit in the bottle. It was supposed to fit in the bottle and screw on to the cap threads. Though this was kind of a worst case senario, I was unable to find it in my "Worst case senario handbook" I had to imporvize. I kept the nipple on the bottle and connected a hose from nip to the busniness end of the pump. I had my dad hold the bottle upside down while I pumped the fluid into the filler hole. Worked pretty well actually and my dad was proud of my inginuity. That feels good. Got everything buttoned up and rolled er' down off the ramp.
Long story still kind long, The gear box feels absolutely AMAZING!! No more grinding going into 2nd gear from high revs and super solid shifts across the board.
A huge thanks to NIck DiNitale and Ray for the write ups and Peat Romano and Andy W for the pics. Once again this message board has saved me from another wallet raping from my local mechanics and gave me the knowledge and cofidence to tackle this kind of stuff on my own. Albeit small stuff.
Thanks for reading, someone had to have posted a new pic/video since you started reading this so go enjoy that.
Thanks again CEG!
Alex
