Motul 300 vs stock (transmission and diff oil) in cold climates
 

So I've done a bit of research, and Motul 300 seems to be one of the favourite oils to use for the transmission and diff. However, pretty much everyone says its not good on colder days. You get a 2nd gear grind. I've never driven my car in the winter, since i only got it 3 weeks ago. So I've never experienced this 2nd gear grind. Plus my car only has 9,000 km's.

So my question is. Does this 2nd gear grind in the winter happen with the stock fluids? if so, is it a bit better with the Motul 300 or not?

I'm not worried about the warmer months of the year, since I've heard good this about Motul 300 being great in warmer weather.

no issues here but my winters are not as cold as yours. Running 300 Motul

In New England my first couple shifts into 2nd, (getting onto my main street, rounding the corner...) were smoother but still made noise. After that, it gets up to temp and it's smoother the rest of the time.

It's not bad. I preferred the other one... name escapes me at the moment... but it's discontinued now. I use Redline and it's slightly less grindy than Motul. I would say Redline > Motul > OEM.

I think you're talking about pentosin.

So do all oils have the grind? Including stock?

yeah especially early in the life of the car. Mostly gone around 15-20K km. I'm at 50K km, no issues. No grinds unless my fault

The grind/crunch can be avoided by just depressing the clutch completely and shifting quick and deliberately into 2nd. It'll still clunk if it's cold. The fluid change won't alleviate that issue. It's just tight tolerances.

300 does feel smoother over all once the drivetrain is up to temp.

So much better than stock here in Vermont with my car. Switching from stock was the best move I could recommend

I'm aware of that. My concern is whether the stock fluid when cold and in the winter time. Is Motul 300 still better than stock fluids when cold.

I'm not concerned about when the fluids are warmed up.

Try reading the rest of the post...

Nothing is going to "solve the cold crunch" because there's nothing to solve.
It's all just tight specs and cold climates.
Be deliberate and careful with the transmission much like you would the engine when it's cold. :iono:
Pentosin might make you feel a little better about it but all it's doing is masking the noise slightly.
The good news is the tranny warms up super quick compared to the rest of the powertrain.

Alright, that's all i needed to know. Thanks.

I haven't experienced this 2nd gear crunch, because i haven't had the opportunity to drive my car in the winter yet.

Isn't Pentosin discontinued? that's what I've read at least.

I guess I'll do the change to Motul 300 since the 2nd gear crunch is pretty much unavoidable in the winter.

Honestly it's not too bad at all. Literally I feel it for the first 1km of my drive even on the coldest days this past winter where it was hitting -30C.

There are also a ton of other High Performance fluids you can look up, Redline, Royal Purple, AMSOil etc. It really comes down to cost and brand preference to a certain extent. I think regular change intervals and manual driving best practices will do much better for over all transmission/differential longevity.

Pentosin GL-4 MTF is discontinued and replaced by GL-5 MTF

Sent from a potato

You can run that without issues. Don't get hung up on the GL-5 rating. Motul is also GL-5 rated.