So today I replaced the oil in my transmission and differential for the first time (car has 70k miles, I've had it since 44k). When I drained the transmission I was surprised to see that there was an entire gallon of oil (nearly overfilled the paint can I was using to catch it). The oil looked fairly new (a lot cleaner than the diff thats for sure) and I believe it would have been changed when I blew an engine about 10k ago and had a reman installed at the dealership. Well anyways it seems they put an entire gallon of tranny oil in, not sure how they managed that since if you fill it to the fill plug you get your standard 2.6 quarts.

After my tranny/diff oil change the car drives like a complete dream. I used to have problems with unsmooth shifts and the tranny would 'catch' if I was going say 30mph in 3rd gear and let off the throttle w/ the clutch still engaged - this is completely gone. It seriously feels like I'm driving a different car.

Anyways anything I should be concerned about finding so much tranny oil? Anything else I should check to make sure it isn't that f'd up? I imagine that much oil was causing a ton of resistance in the transmission, although I'm just guessing at that - the car does seem somewhat quicker, or at least quicker to respond.

I ended up using Royal Purple oil all around, many thanks to all the threads I found via search, especially whatever mentioned the need to pickup 23mm and 24mm sockets.

 

The tranny should be clean. I can't remember the last time I took mine apart and it was dirty at all.