What does the book say for the ZF 5 speed as far as capacity.
I just wanna know because mine started showing full at 4 quarts and we stuck in a fifth one to help with the gear lash noise I get with the new clutch.

 

The Helms manual calls for 3.2L or about 3.5 qts. A lot of guys overfill it to quiet the gear rollover noise.

 

3.4 quarts according to ford and they take syntetic atf

 

I guess I called it gear lash. I meant Gear roll over. Man is that loud. Especially if you are under there and your crazy brother decides to rev it up. I ain't never moved sooo fast!!!

 

like blue mule said 3.4 but i dump 4 in mine!

 

yep, 3.4 quarts. when you rev the truck you shouldn't hear the gear rollover b/c the engine spikes are not as big above idle. do you hear yours above idle Neal? mine just does it at idle. it stops if you push in the clutch or rev it. when ppl ask me about it i just laugh and say that's a dual disk slick. LoL. finally i go ahead and explain it to them. haha

 

Yup it stops when I rev it.

Everybody here puts in 4 I put in 5. Do you think there would be a difference?

 

If the tranny is in the truck how do you overfill it? You can't get it any higher than the height of the fill plug. Park it on a sideways slope maybe?

 

Take out the shifter and fill thru the hole.

 

What does this gear rollover sound like? Is it a bad thing? I've heard all kinds of noises out of my Bronco's 5spd over the years but my truck's tranny has never made any kind of noise that I'm aware of. Maybe the engine noise masks it.

 

It sounds like a bunch of minature trolls running around in there beating hammers on everything they can reach with their greedy little hands. It sounds like a serious problem but is typical with the SMF replacement. You can put your hand on the tranny and veel the vibration. And no the engine will not drown out the noise unless you have a pro fuel dragster.

 

This is one of the reasons that a lot of people take the ATF out, and either just use 10w30 noshearing synthetic, or mix atf and 10w30.

Everyone i've talked to says the synthetic oil lubricates better then the ATF, and they feel the ATF is to thin. It is for an auto trans.. ya know.
The only downside to not using ATF is that you don't have the detergants in there to keep things clean.
I run 20w50 in my M5OD. It shifts and runs much better now, unless its cold, then sometimes first is hard to find for a moment.
I do need to change it here soon.