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Well, using a good-quality lighter-weight oil such as Redline MTL is definitely better than using oil that's too heavy. As Robby noted, a lot of common "gear oils" are too thick and this has caused a lot of gearboxes to get old before their time. The worst era for this seems to have been right after Saab dealers stopped stocking the special Saab transaxle oil, and people started using any old thing in the gearbox... then, just to make matters worse, if it started getting noisy they'd put in thicker oil to "quiet it down". Another problem: The original drain plug required a special tool that most independent lube shops didn't have, so sometimes they'd just "forget" to change the transaxle fluid.
So, with all these potential hazards it's unfortunately possible to have a 37,000-mile transaxle that's on its last legs, whereas another transaxle that's had frequent, regular changes of the correct oil may be doing fine at 137,000 miles.
Still, especially since you said this car has been sitting awhile, you might want to try flushing out the transaxle and see if that helps the noise. How to do this: drain whatever's in there now and refill it to the correct level with automatic transmission fluid. (ATF is nice and thin so it sloshes around easily, and it's full of detergents to clean out the goop.) Then drive the car around the block ONCE (no more.) Then drain the ATF and refill with Redline MTL, Bel-Ray Gear Saver, or other equivalent gear oil no heavier than SAE 80EP. See if that helps. If you want, repeat the whole cycle again.
Keep in mind that these transaxles often are a bit noisy even if there's not really much wrong with them, partly because the transaxle is mounted very close to the passenger compartment with nothing for sound deadening except an inch or so of dirty fiberglass behind the toe board. General rule of thumb is that if you can converse without screaming, it's probably OK...
posted by 68.13.18...
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