Santron Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 After reading several posts on this board about people who have happily changed their transmission fluid to the thicker Mobil 1 75W/140 synthetic gear oil, I decided to take the plunge. When I removed the drain plug, this is what it looked like (below). Is this an excessive amount of metal filings on the drain plug? I know that the the fluid hasn't been changed in 6K miles. The first shot shows the plug as it came out of the bike, and the second is after I sprayed it with brake cleaner to remove the sludge and expose only the metal finings. Should I be worried, or shopping for a new transmission? Link to comment
Dances_With_Wiener_Dogs Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Hey Michael, Don't worry about a thing. This is completely normal. Happy riding! Link to comment
russell_bynum Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Mine's been making that much metal for 75,000 miles. Don't worry about it, what you are seeing is normal. Link to comment
Joe Frickin' Friday Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Get your fingers in there and grab some of that stuff off of the magnet. I think you'll find that it's all extremely fine metallic sludge, not the slivers of metal that it appears to be. It's just the way that iron particles respond to a magnetic field; the little tiny particles follow the magnetic field lines and construct long, thin filaments that look like whole slivers of iron. If it is indeed all really fine sludge as I suspect, then no problem; you've got a pretty normal quantity on the plug in the first pic. If it actually is chunks of metal, your gearbox is on its way out, and I'd avoid any cross-country trips until you've addressed the problem. Link to comment
Santron Posted March 13, 2006 Author Share Posted March 13, 2006 Get your fingers in there and grab some of that stuff off of the magnet. I think you'll find that it's all extremely fine metallic sludge, not the slivers of metal that it appears to be. It's just the way that iron particles respond to a magnetic field; the little tiny particles follow the magnetic field lines and construct long, thin filaments that look like whole slivers of iron. If it is indeed all really fine sludge as I suspect, then no problem; you've got a pretty normal quantity on the plug in the first pic. If it actually is chunks of metal, your gearbox is on its way out, and I'd avoid any cross-country trips until you've addressed the problem. Yes, you are correct about that; when I cleaned the plug before reinstalling, I was amazed that it was all a fine paste with really no particles of substance - they were not the jagged little pieces of metal that they appeared to be. Thanks for the input everyone! Link to comment
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