So I have a 96 Suzuki Every Van and I got it about 1 year ago. I've been doing preventaive maintenance in the last year and finally got around to changing the manual transmission oil. I can't describe how amazed I was at how poorly the oil condition was. It came out grey and brown. The plug had a 1/4" of sludge caked on it that was just a grey mush. Heres the picture of the plug before I cleaned it off: Pretty right? I cleaned it up and put about 1.5 quarts of Royale Purple 75-90W oli back in. Hopefully that will make the shifting that much smoother. Change your tranny oil people, its probably still the oil from the factory.
I finally got together all of the different gear oil I need to change the fluids in the manual transmission, transfer case, front differential and rear differential. On the 1996 Hijet, it's all technically different oil, which is a bit of a pain. The specified straight weight oils weren't readily available in the US. I mostly selected the closest multi-weight gear oils I could find, making sure to select the correct API rating to avoid additives that would attack yellow metals where that mattered. I ended up with three different gear oils instead of four. I'm waiting for a break in the winter weather (either cold, or rainy) to change the fluids. Today was an almost. Hopefully tomorrow, before the rains start again. I also bought a selection of copper crush washers to use when reinstalling the drain plugs and fill plugs rather than trying to reuse the existing crush washers. I did the engine flush and oil change a couple of weeks ago and there was no crush washer on the drain plug. It was slowly weeping oil, and the attempted fix was MOAR TORK. The drain plug threads were half stripped. Yikes. I replaced the drain plug with an F-133 Fumoto drain valve to make future oil changes faster and easier, and it threaded in without problem, torqued nicely, and the supplied fiber washer stopped the minor oil drip. I hate leaky vehicles. I concur with your statement. Change the fluids!
I found the $6 multi use transfer pump from Harbor Freight makes transmission oil changes much easier. Maybe best $6 I ever spent
I have the 2 wd Every and want to change the transmission oil. I am confident that I have located the drain plug but am not able to locate the fill plug. I feel a little stupid as I was thinking it would be obvious. Also it appears that the trans and diff are combined am I right about this?
Yeah tranny and diff are one unit. The fill plug is on the back side about 3/4 the way up from the drain.
I think I found it, it is kind of nestled in a little cutout in a bracket. It's an awkward angle for filling maybe I'll just pull the backup switch and fill from there but watch the fill hole for when it tops out.
Sounds like you made it happen. I think when I did it I had a tube down to the fill hole and held the bottle above with the engine hatch off to fill it.
