ok I just have a few real quick questions and if you guys could help that would be tight. First can someone tell me what kind of oil to use in my tranny? second, can someone tell me if it is normal for there to be a little smoke in the valve cover, after I got done driving today I took off the oil filler cap and a little bit of smoke I guess from the oil was comming out, is it cool or should I use another oil, I used Valvoline DuraBlend Synthetic Blend 10W-40 (thats exactly what it says on the container) I thought this was good oil, what should I do?

 

First off, do you have a manual or automatic transmission? If you have a manual, any manual transmission oil will work, since it is nothing more than a bunch of gears with no fluid pressure or combustion heat. If you have an automatic, used only what is recomended in your manual. Not all ATF is the same, and you can do serious damage if you don't use the exact recomendation from Honda. Second, a little smoke comming from the oil fill cap is normal if the engine has been running a while. Any car will do this. That's what happens when oil gets hot. As for which type of oil to use, I would not go any heavier than 10w-30. If your car recomends 5w-30, I'd use that. The number with the "w" is the thickness of the oil when cold, so the lower the number, the thinner the oil when cold and the faster it will circulate thought your engine when it is started cold. The number after the dash is the viscosity when hot. Using anything above 30 is usually for racing or high compression engines only (like diesels). You don't want to use 40 weight if you're not running at 6000 rpm for 3 hours straight, because it may be too thick to circulate properly through a normal running engine.

 

just depends on where you live, but 5w-30 or 10w-30 seems to be good, 20w-50 is too thick. I agree with fastball the smoke is normal if you had the car fully warmed up and drove a while, just not TOO much smoke lol....

 

well see I just use 10w-40 because in AZ it gets VERY hot and I just figured that it should be a little thicker in the heat. Also, it will prevent wear easier, i dunno. I used 10w-40 on my 87 accord with 211,000 miles on it as well and it ran fine, still pretty peppy too.

 

yea then you should use 10w-40 if its that hot out there, didnt know you lived in such a hot area, and yea thats also why youll get some smoke when you open the oil cap....

 

as long as its normal then its cool... the reason I noticed it, is because my oil always seems like its low and I dont ever see my car blow out smoke from the exhaust and it dont leak anywhere. could it be smoking and going up into the intake manifold through the hoses that are connected to my valve cover?

 

oh yeah and what could be causing my brakes to loose pressure? It doesn't leak any fluid but sometimes when I put my foot on the brake pedal it slowly looses pressure. Could this be from the brake fluid reservoir cap not closing tight enough or what?

 

either that or if it has air in the system it will do that, you need to bleed the system, if its not losing fluid then its most likely air in the system....

 

for the tranny, use Honda MTF or Redline MTF. regular gear oil doesnt contain the friction modifiers necessary to prevent synchro wear, as most were designed to be used with rear differentials

 

yea using gear oil in the trannies is how you hurt the syncros etc, the honda mtf is a safe bet, some people swear by the redline MTF but I have yet to use it so I cannot say....