to a good full synthetic such as Redline, Amsoil, Royal Purple, etc. I'm starting to think that changing the factory, "lifetime", semi-synthetic oil to a good full synthetic can reduce the probability of tranny failure. Trouble is, I have no data to back this up. I plan on changing mine as soon as my warranty is up.

I have heard comments from those who have changed out the MTF 94 oil as to how bad it looked, even with only 10,000 miles or so on it.

 

I'm interested in this topic here, I hope someone writes in soon.

 

Maybe I should have worded the heading different, some may not know the Texaco MTL 94 is the factory stuff?

I guess not that many people are using a different tranny oil, and if they are, they may be those who track their MINIs, which could make the outcome different from those of us who don't use our cars for the track.

There being very little pre-emptive action one can take to hopefully prevent a Midland failure, this seems worth persuing, now I need to figure out which of the synthetic oils is THE best.

 

Good luck finding this info out. I think it might be too hard to quantify. I have also been thinking of changing out my fluid. I think any pure synthetic oil will be better. I'm going to use redline. Of coarse, this won't help the seal failures. It definitely won't hurt to put in better oil, but oil won't fix the cheap sincros.

 

I know I'm dreaming, but I keep thinking it just might even help the seals and the "cheap" sychros.

The Midland is only rated at slightly more HP and torque than an MC produces, and you're right, any pure synthetic should help.

Probably too much hype out there to determine which synthetic is the best.

Is you MC out of warranty?

 

It's way out of warranty. I'm already planning to go for the uprated midlands from minimaniauk when my current one goes. I do believe that when the dealership replaced the old tranny, the replacement was covered by the warranty. But when it means a sale of a car, I'm sure they are more lenient about what is covered.

 

I think the pure synthetics are very similar. If they are all in the same class, they will probably be nearly identical. I'm certainly no oil expert though.