Ive been keeping close tabs on the Civics oil. Checked it today and WHAM!!! in two days from the last check it went from clear and couldnt be seen on the dip stick to finger staining black. Right at 3500 miles.

So it was time to buy it fresh life fluids and filter. Got a case of M1 5-20 and a M1 filter. Cars so new its not even listed. Looks like a Accord filter so i picked up a M1 filter. Stoped by Wal-mart and got two jugs of cheapo wally oil and filters so I can do my anal retentive flush before i bath it in liq. gold. And i have a full suppy of the idiot crush washers.

Ive not been real happy over all with the way the 5MT shifts at low rpms and loads. Its like you can feel the syncros asking for a millsec. more time to get there act together. So knowing what some Acura and Honda 6MT owners have delt with i went to a Chevy dealer right next door to one of the two rip off Honda dealers in Tulsa. Was going to get 4 quarts of GM sycromesh MT fluid for the little Civic. They had none... OUT!!!! Parts guy at the counter was a real gent. He checked all dealers in the areas stock. All of them where out. He told me he could have my order filled by friday afternoon for no extra cost. Price was $10.00 a quart. Offered to even have it shiped to my house ups red sat. and would let me bill it to my ups acct. number. He looked out the door and saw the Civic setting there. And grined. I asked him. Who bought you out? He said Honda dealer next door. I told him it would be tooooo cold this weekend to work the Civic over but that I would pay in advance for the fluid for a will call pick up when he got his stock back in. He just took my name and number and said he would hold it back for me. He said they cant keep the stuff in stock. Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Ford and Mopar dealers are buying all they and every dealer in the area gets. He said they are having to rat hole stock for there own service dept. And added they dont hardly use any of it. A real nice guy he was. He knocked two bucks off each qt. for me in the end and i didnt ask for it.

Armed with this bit of info and knowing what sleeze the Honda dealer was next door... I had to go over and look into this. Now mind you this dealer is where i started trying to buy my Hondas at. And they went out of there way to be ass holes. Dealing with the Mafia would have been better. They should issue you a rape kit when you drive on there lot. When i bought the Accord and the Civic I made a point to go back there and buy crush washers with the bill of sale taped up in the window from Mark Roberts Honda in the Accord and Civic and parked them right up front blocking access infront of there leader displays. I like being me.

So I just walk into there service area like Norton on the honeymooners... Twisting ,,, turning and with a dumb look on my face. Low and behold theres 8 cases of GM tranny fluid setting right in the service area on the shops side of the parts counter. OO and the Civic had its bill of sale taped in the drivers window once again at $468 above invoice with a $49.00 doc fee. come to find out my Civic Sedan is more rare with a MT and Navi than a Si with Navi. The old sales manager was livid... I thought he was going to stroke out. he was trying to sell a AT with Navi he dosent have in stock standing in front of my car to block the sales contract posted in my car. I shoved the theif away from my car and showed his cust. a fair price.... GO THERE.... Turned to him and showed him a hand full of crush washers and stated. I will have crush washers for life if I can spoil one sale of yours. got in my car,,, took down the paper work and left. As his cust. left... LMAO.

Was a great day,,, spoiled a sale for a sales thug,,, got some more crush washers and found out. Hondas tranny fluid is junk.... there buying the GM stuff..... :naughty: :naughty: :naughty: :naughty:

:rofl: Classic...

psyshack,
Could you please let us know if the GM fluid is an improvement? I know Stevel's TL had an improvement with the fluid. I love my car, but I noticed that if the weather is below 10 degrees outsite, the tranny is very hard to shift into second w/o double clutching or just skipping it. The issue is gone once the engine is warm.

Has anyone tried Red Line for the Honda MT? Just curious.

Has anyone tried Red Line for the Honda MT? Just curious.

Yes.....I put in mine a week after I bought it and won't use anything else. I've forgotten how much the fluid was but a dealer charged me $28 to change it which was fine with me.......messy, messy job.

They recommended MT-90 if I remember correctly. An e-mail to them will confirm which is correct. The Mazda I had previously had RL MTL in the tranny and it made a world of difference in an otherwise notchy shifting 5 speed.....no where near Honda's gearbox.

http://www.redlineoil.com/products_gearlubricants.asp?pvID=74&prodID=57&subcatID=18

I did my flush and change this weekend on the civic with 4221 miles on it. It wasnt as nasty as the Accords oil was. No green color and just a hint of baby poo smell.

I dumped the breakin oil and filter. Also dumped the tranny fluid. Refilled engine with super tech 5w-30 and used one of there filters. Filled the tranny back up with super tech 10w-30.

I timed it so I would have some udeful driving that needed to be done that resulted in 45 miles being put on the flush fluids. Dumped them. They didnt look half bad. Didnt look quite as good as the Accord after the 2nd. flush,,, but ok.

I then bathed it in new permanent fluids. In went the M1 5w-20 w/M1 filter. I went ahead and decieded to give Hondas MTF another try.

All went well! The Civic has responded to the new oil very well. The engine basicly cant be heard at idel now and the tranny shifts alot better. the engine is sooo quite I can hear the accessry belt running now when driving down the road. It has a zip zip slight whine noise to it now that could not be heard before.

Im going to rotate the tires on the Civic today. Do a brake inspection and a good general over all bolt and visual inspection.

The window auto up function started working this week on the drivers door. Still debating if its worth my time to expose my pride and joy to a Honda service dept. to have this addressed. I would much prefer NOBODY other than myself ever work on the car. So I going to wait this one out abit longer.

After spending sometime showing the Civic some love. It was time to fiddle with the Ranger. Its only been driven maybe 3k miles since the purchase of the Accord approx. nine months ago. Around the time of the Accords purchase I did a oil and tranny fluid change, put a new battery in it, had new tires put on it and gave it a good general going over. Knowing its days as a daily driver where over I wanted to lay it up in good shape and it be ready for me to use it as a truck when needed.

The oil was nasty in the truck. It may only get driven once every two weeks or so and has went as long as a month. Its always driven atleast 20 miles when it is driven to make sure the oil has been heated enough to get rid of any moisture and any fuel wash down.

The Motorcraft 5w-30 didnt look like it responded well to this treatment. The Ranger never liked M1. It always used a qt. or so between oil changes. So it got put back on Motorcraft some years ago.

So I figured what the heck. I put a super tech oil filter on it and used super tech 5w-30 syn. oil. Also checked the tranny fluid to make sure it was still up to full. The rear seal weeps ever so slightly. I will replace the seal when I do the u-joints this spring. I look forward to seeing how the truck respnds to the super tech syn. And how the oil repsonds to not being driven much.

Nothing wrong with Super Tech, both oil and filters. Good products for the money but so is Motorcraft oil since it's a synth blend in most weights.