Garage Put In The Wrong Transmission Oil

[michaelSlater]

(Apologies for cross-posting, I'm new here!)

The local dealership garage managed to put manual gear oil into my Corolla's automatic transmission. The car was driven around 180 miles before the oil was changed for automatic transmission fluid. Does anyone here have any idea what the likely consequences will be?

For information, the garage that achieved this feat of engineering competence was Andrew Rowley Toyota in Watford. Avoid them at all costs!

[Geriatric]

How was the error discovered? ATF has a viscosity of about half normal gearbox oil and is formulated to withstand much higher temperatures produced in auto. boxes. I do not know the capacities for the Corolla box but normally only about 25% is in fact changed the balance remaining in the torque convertor etc.

I would think the chances of any damage in 180 miles is zero . I believe it is posible by diverting the feed from the box to the oil cooler to pump out all the oil in the box and if this is possible on the Corolla and was done then you should have no problems. However if only a normal change was done then the incorrect gearbox oil will only have been diluted by a percentage and clearly this is not an ideal situation.

[AidanKildare]

You'd need to find out the specification of the oil that they used. From what I remember, GL5 spec gear oil (the most commonly used nowadays) has anti-friction additives which work superbly in a modern manual transmissions and diffs but would not be good for an auto box. You might want to get an independent assessment on the situation from a qualified technical person. The additives coat the components and won't be removed by a simple fluid change.

[michaelSlater]

Thanks for the comments.

I don't know whether the garage removed the old oil from the torque converter. I guess that we'll need to have the transmission checked over.

We've been advised by a local auto transmission specialist that transmission problems are very likely down the line, but this, of course, makes it difficult to show cause in taking legal action against the garage.

[Geriatric]

In Portugal BP Energear SHX-M is the recommended gear oil for conventional boxes. Why not e-mail BP at afreshapproach@bp.com and ask them for their opinion regarding likely long term damage on using this oil in automatic box.