Checking for contaminants in the transaxle fluid
 

What's the easiest way to do this? My initial thought was to just jack the back end of the car up into the air and crawl under, remove the fill plug, and extract a sample of the gear oil through there. The problem is, I don't know if jacking up just the rear of the car will shift the gear oil enough to submerge the fill hole and cause me to get that wonderful smell of hypoid oil all over everything in the garage.

For those of you who remember, I changed the transaxle lube and found metal particles in the then 3,000 mile old lube (switched over to synthetic). 3,000 miles before the switch to synthetic (and the accompanying finding of metal particles) I had replaced a horribly slipping clutch and had replaced the old and age-unknown gear lube. That lube was 100% clean. After putting the new clutch in, I biffed a few shifts getting used to the car all over again and my current theory is that those botched shifts and not an immanent failure in the transaxle, are the reason for the metal particles. So now that I've put some miles on it without botched shifts and with clean gear lube I want to check it.

For those who are wondering, there were no large bits of metal. It was a very fine dust that was not detectable if I rubbed the oil between my fingers, but which did give the oil a slightly silver sheen.

Aaron

Snake a magnet into the transaxle - the long thin magnets on the end of wires that you can pick up in any auto parts store - then feed it through the fill plug.

Some metal "chaff" is considered normal, regardless of what fluid you use.

AFJuvat

Change the fluid and filter the old through a T-shirt.

Thanks, any idea on what the threshold should be before I get worried? The next big trip in the car will be when I take it from Ohio out to Seattle when I move.

Aaron

Some chaff is normal - depending on age of the fluid, there could be quite a bit (remember the synchro rings grind against sliders to engage gears)

If you have a little bit after a few thousand miles, I wouldn't worry

AFJuvat