It had some metal on it. Should have took a picture. A fair amount of it was stuck on the magnet.

 

It had metal on it. More research too be done again.

 

That varigated cell look of your old oil is a dead givaway that ferrous particles are entrained in the oil.
When I questioned an engineer about this phenom years ago, he said it was caused by various groups of magnetic iron particles that allign themselves in ever changing regions of influence to other groups.
When all the particles are non magnetic (brass syncro debris, for example, or aluminum), the metallics are more equally distributed by colloidal forces, and so do not show the cell like areas.

No doubt this is more than you wanted to know about your dirty gear oil.

 

That's fascinating, thanks for sharing. Also, I didn't know you could fill your transmission or gearbox with diesel or kerosene to clean out old oil/water. Is this done often in the professional world?

But back on topic: if your trans is over 20 years old, it's not surprising there's metal flakes in the oil. I say if it's shifting fine as it is, do as millball suggests and then fill it with fresh oil. My money's on that trans going another 30k miles at least.

 

yeah it doesnt grind or anything going into any gear. doesnt howl or wine. you can shift from any gear too any gear. im not an expert but it doesnt seem too show any of the signs of going out. when i got it, it simly had no shifter bushing or seat. like not there, someone took them out and didnt replace it. it was hard not too miss the gears on gear changes. Do you suspect grinding gears would do this? thanks for all the info by the way.

 

I don't know about what a 'professional' might do, but flushing various gear cases and mechanisms is something I do often. The longer a thing has been neglected, the more important it is to get the debris out. Sometimes it takes more than one go-round.

Flush, fill and go, for sure that tranny might last for years. Should have been drained the moment any debris appeared, long time ago. But you can't change the past.......

No doubt that gear grinding adds to the metal load in the gear oil. Once there is a visible amount of entrained metal, the metal has circulated thru every part of the gearcase, degrading every gear face and bearing in there. Grit begets more grit.

This does'nt necessarily mean that the tranny is near death, but it certainly does'nt increase the trannys chances of making the million mile club.

 

Well a short update. I got the short throw shifter in place and now it isn't leaking form there anymore.
My back and neck where not going to let me wipe it down and clean it up, but I think I still have a leak. dang.
today at lunch I am going to pull it into one of the buildings and use a creeper too slide under there and see if I can figure where it is coming from. Maybe if I am lucky it is just all the stuff on the trans leaking off. Yeah right huh? lol

 

turns out all that pressure blew out the trans main seal. called around and since it needed some internal work and that seal is a pain to replace the cost of having it sealed was very high. I ended up just buying a marlin crawler trans. It is at the mechanics right now. Should be all good to go as soon as he gets to it. next week I suspect. So anyhow that is the update and finish to this issue. Just thought I would add this as an ending point for anybody wondering what happened, and the fix I utilized.

 

Ifeel your pain. I have a 1982 4x4,5 speed ,L52 transmission 22r engine. 187000 miles. Transmission oil has started leaking from shifter hole, and may also be from around breather thingy and back-up plug thinky. What is causing this? Could a stopped up breather cause it? It doesn't leak from around base of shifter plate,but is coming out shifter hole big time.

,

 

If memory serves, those earlier transmission/transfer arrangements didn't have an internal seal isolating them, so under certain conditions fluid could move from one to another. But my memory is a bit sketchy on that. You might check your transfer case to see if it's low, and remove the trans fill plug and see if it's overfilled.
I know they don't see as much traffic, but posting something like this in the proper forum(pre 1984 trucks) would get you better, more detailed, feedback.

 

Thanks for the guidence. I'm new to this site and not real computer savvy.Ill check out the pre-84 forum. Thanks again