• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

ATF for a Healey Transmission/OD

Share this page

RAC68

RAC68

Darth Vader
Offline
HI All,

A Healey owner on another Healey Forum was having problems with his OD and his mechanic recomended he use Automatic Transmission Fluid for the unit. After reading a respons on this subject by Bob Spidell and how it was recommended for his Mustang GT's manual transmission and also thinking how similar in operation an Automatic Transmission is to our OD, I am beginning to feel it could be a viable fluid for us to use.

High pressure functionality, hydraulic clutch operation, smooth shifting, and long lasting. These are some of the qualities I have heard provided by ATF within Healey Transmission/ODs and, on top of those, reasonably priced and easily available with all appropriate modern additives to assist in the operation. Last, as I understand, it can be retained by the trans/OD unlike the Red Line MTL and was specified by Volvos with ODs.

So, what do you think?

Ray(64BJ8P1)
 
Interesting thought. Note also that ATF typically only needs to be changed every 50-100K miles, so it seems 'durable,' though every AT I've seen recently has at least a small cooler, usually integrated into the radiator, and that might be the key to its longevity. The owner's manual for my Mustang specs Mercon V for both manual and auto transmissions; at $6-7/qt it's almost two-thirds less costly than the MT-90 I recently bought (and that price was an eBay 'special'). I don't think you could go wrong with any decent oil/fluid; our boxes seem to do OK with everything from 30W non-detergent to exotic synthetics, and I'd guess ATF slots somewhere in between. When I bought it I thought the Mustang's shifting was a bit balky so I replaced the OEM fill with Royal Purple Synchromax on the recommendation of a Mustang 'guru.' It did seem to smooth out shifting over time, but I can't rule out the psychosomatic effect.

I just dumped the cheap 20W-50 I put in the gearbox of my BJ8 after I rebuilt it and put in MT-90. So far--about 60 miles--it's still not leaking.
 
Never gave it a thought for the Healey, but used ATF in all my P1800 series Volvos ?
 
Back
Top