Is it so hard to be honest?

[Suckerpunch]

First off, I no angel but, this really gets me.


I just bought my bike about a month ago. I was told by the PO that he just changed all fluids and I did not have to worry about them for a while

I knew better and know its allways a good idea to flush all fluids anyway.

Today I decided to drain the rear drive shaft oil. It was dark coco brown with light tan swirls. Just changed? when? in 1981?

Ive done the brakes. They were bad. Oil in the drive shaft sucked. Cant wait to do the motor oil

Shock oil is on the short list too.

[DGXSER]

Stupid can not be cured!!!

If it makes you feel any better, it is possible the PO simply emptied out as much of the same brown goo that was in it when he changed it, and never bothered to clean it out before adding the new fluid. Which led to it turning to the same kind of goo quickly. A possibility anyway.

[CatatonicBug]

The manual says to leave the drain plug out for something like 15 minutes, to allow the thick, old 90w oil to drain out completely. I doubt the PO did that. Even with engine oil, if you were to change the oil today, ride 50 miles tomorrow, and drain it again, I would expect the oil to look almost as bad as the stuff you just drained out. It took 3 oil changes in the course of 1 week for me to notice any difference in the color of the oil. It's amazing how quickly that oil gets dirty.

However, you can't trust a PO. Unless you physically saw something done, you can never trust that it was done, or done correctly. Especially if it was done by someone who just wanted to sell the bike quickly.

[Suckerpunch]

The manual says to leave the drain plug out for something like 15 minutes, to allow the thick, old 90w oil to drain out completely. I doubt the PO did that. Even with engine oil, if you were to change the oil today, ride 50 miles tomorrow, and drain it again, I would expect the oil to look almost as bad as the stuff you just drained out. It took 3 oil changes in the course of 1 week for me to notice any difference in the color of the oil. It's amazing how quickly that oil gets dirty.

However, you can't trust a PO. Unless you physically saw something done, you can never trust that it was done, or done correctly. Especially if it was done by someone who just wanted to sell the bike quickly.

Do you think I should flush it with an additive?

[jwhughes3]

Seafoam!

An ounce of Seafoam should do the trick.

[crazy steve]

Do you think I should flush it with an additive?

Actually, add a bit of ATF to it. That has lots of detergents, and is capable of carrying the load. Nearly all modern car manual trannies use it, and I've even ran it in older gearboxes for faster shifts. The only issue with the older boxes was they're not sealed well enough for something that thin, and the trans leaked like a sieve out every conceivable place...

'78E original owner