Not all gear designs are the same. As such, not all lubes are the same, either. Your vehicle’s gear design depends on the load it carries, the speed at which the gears rotate, and the direction the transfer of power needs to travel. There are many different types of gear designs in your car.
When most people think of a gear, they usually picture a spur gear. A spur gear is used on parallel shafts and normally plays some sort of gear reduction role to give torque advantages.
Closely resembling a spur gear is a helical gear. The helical gear uses an angled tooth to mesh with its counterpart. This characteristic allows the helical gear to be mounted on parallel shafts or shafts at 90°. The helical gear is mainly used in your transmission due to its strength, high efficiency, and quietness.
If you need to transfer torque at an angle, a bevel gear would be your solution. These types of gears mainly have applications in industrial equipment, and it is used in automobiles as well, such as in your rear differential.
A close relative of the bevel gear is the hypoid gear. This gear is commonly used in rear differentials and provides superior efficiency, less noise, and higher gear ratio potentials than the bevel gear.
These common gear designs in the car call for drastically different lubrication properties. The way the gears are designed in a manual transmission is different than how they are set up in a differential; so, naturally, the gear oil would have different characteristics as well. Most cars use hypoid gears in their differentials. These require API GL-5 as the concentration and extreme pressure additives, due to the sliding action the spiral design incorporates. SAE 75W-90 and API GL-5 is recommended for use in the differentials for everyday driving, as opposed to SAE 75W-140 for towing, due to the high pressures created by this environment.
The gearing of manual transmissions varies greatly, as does the oil the manufacturers recommend for them. Sometimes the manufacturer will recommend an automatic transmission fluid for their product or a specialty lube, like API GL-4. GL-4 has about half the extreme pressure additives of GL-5. GL-4 is recommended most often, because the transmission does not have a need for the extreme pressure additives of GL-5. Synthetic oils are always recommended over petroleum oils, due to their service intervals and performance under extreme conditions.
Visit: http://www.synthetic-motor-oils.com
About the author:
Author Vincent Platania represents the Amsoil.
Source of the World's Best Synthetic Lubricants - Motor Oil and Filters
Visit http://www.synthetic-motor-oils.com
Article Source: http://www.Free-Articles-Zone.com
