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Starting this off in the Gearhead section so we can talk about it before we open it up.
Referring to our manual transmissions, it seems that the biggest problem is heat. I didn't know this until I kept an eye on the Trifecta boards, where discussions to the Sonic forums were posted.
http://www.sonicownersforum.com/for...n/6217-building-stronger-6-spd-man-trans.html
They have a guy there who was intelligent enough to keep an eye on the Vauxhall boards, where they discovered that heat is the issue.
Referring to our manual transmissions, it seems that the biggest problem is heat. I didn't know this until I kept an eye on the Trifecta boards, where discussions to the Sonic forums were posted.
http://www.sonicownersforum.com/for...n/6217-building-stronger-6-spd-man-trans.html
They have a guy there who was intelligent enough to keep an eye on the Vauxhall boards, where they discovered that heat is the issue.
from the AstraVXRforums
With the M32 heat is its worst enemy, it’s a 3 shaft design all squeezed into a compact casing.The box build’s up heat and the oil gets cooked and loses its lubrication qualities, to make matters worse there is no service interval on the gear oil so bearing's wear and synco’s go. One of the best preventative measures is to change the oil using a fully synthetic gear lube, and if you use the car very hard, have a lot of power or use one on track then change the oil regularly. I know of a couple of people in competition who have used a gearbox oil cooler and this has all but eliminated failures for them (Bo being one of them). I’ve been asked to put together an oil cooler kit for this and will be doing this in the next month for people who use them hard. Unfortunately we are not allowed them in the Production touring car Championship, so we run a breather catch tank and ½ a litre of more oil to spread the thermal load which helps and we also change the oil every round!
So if you have a M32 get the oil changed, we use a 75-90 synthetic gear lube, hope this helps.
If you take a long read through the vauxhall forums, the m32 failures are happening to all too often to daily drivers that don't race at all.
The issue of heat stems from the compact 3 shaft design. I will probably run my stock MZ4 til it fails, but when it does, I'll have a replacement ready and hopefully fitted with a cooler.
I got pretty intimate with the M32 this week after doing 2 R&R's
It's a pretty straightforward job and can be done in approx 3-4 hrs once you're familiar with it all.
I did notice that my Redline Synth gear oil was pretty smoked after just 8k mi.
And also there was evidence of break-in metal sparkles in the spent oil.
So from here on out I'm going to change the gear oil every 5k........ if my M32 is still alive in 5k.