Transcription
Your transmission just started slipping. Maybe it hesitates between second and third. Maybe it shudders when you pull away from a stop sign. You take it to a shop and the man behind the counter pulls up a quote on his screen without even looking at the car first. $3,500 for a rebuild. He tells you these things just wear out. He says modern transmissions are complicated. He says you are lucky you caught it early. He is not telling you the whole truth.
There is a $2 fluid sitting on a shelf at any farm supply cooperative in this country that can stop that shudder, restore that shift feel, and push a worn automatic transmission another 100,000 mi without ever opening the pan. It is not a miracle product sold on late night television. It is not an additive with a foil label and a cartoon wrench on the bottle. It is something a group of Mennonite mechanics in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania have been using in farm equipment transmissions since the early 1960s. And the first time I watched a man named Ezra Glick pour it into a 1979 [music] International Harvester with a transmission that had seen 40 years of fieldwork, I thought he had lost his mind. Stay with me.
Because before this video is over, I am going to tell you about a 1968 Society of Automotive Engineers technical paper that documented this exact substance [music] in planetary gear systems and how that paper quietly disappeared from mainstream service literature within a decade of its publication. This works on any automatic transmission built after 1955. It works on slipping bands. It works on shuddering torque converters. It works on transmissions your dealership has already told you to write off, and it costs less than a bottle of water at the airport.
The first time I drove out to Elizabethtown, I was not looking for transmission advice. I was looking for a man named Tobias Esch, who repaired antique farm equipment out of a barn that his grandfather had built in 1921. I found the barn. I found Tobias. And on the wall of that barn, hanging between a set of hand-ground gears and a row of labeled tin canisters, was a hand-lettered sign that read, "Every machine deserves honest oil." I asked Tobias what that meant. He did not answer immediately. He walked me over to a workbench where a transmission from a 1967 Oliver tractor sat in pieces on a canvas tarp. He picked up a small tin canister, about the size of a coffee mug, pried the lid with a flathead screwdriver, and showed me the contents. It was the color of dark amber. It smelled faintly of earth and something I could not immediately name. He dipped a rag into it, rubbed it between his fingers, and held his hand up to the light coming through the barn window. He said, "This is tung oil. We put it in everything that shifts."
Tung oil is pressed from the seeds of the tung tree, a fast-growing plant native to central China that was introduced to the American South in the early 1900s. The paint and varnish industry used it as a wood finish for decades. Woodworkers still use it today, but the property that makes tung oil extraordinary as a wood finish is the same property that makes it extraordinary inside a transmission. It is a drying oil. When it contacts metal under heat and pressure, it does not simply coat the surface. It polymerizes. It forms a thin, flexible, cross-linked film that bonds directly to metal and does not wash away with oil changes the way conventional fluid additives do. When that film forms on friction clutch plates inside an automatic transmission, three things happen. First, the coefficient of friction stabilizes. The clutch packs engage more smoothly and hold at the correct clamping force instead of either slipping or grabbing. Second, microscopic scoring on the drum and hub surfaces fills in as the polymer settles into the low spots. Third, the film resists the heat spikes that occur during hard shifts, the same heat spikes that destroy friction material and cook transmission fluid in the first place.
Tobias told me he had learned the technique from his father, who had learned it from a man named Clarence Weaver, who had worked as an agricultural machinery technician for a regional Mennonite community in the 1940s. Clarence Weaver had not invented it. He had read about it. And Clarence Weaver's source was not a backroom conversation or a piece of hearsay passed down at a feed store. It was [music] a published document, a real one. That is where the story gets complicated.
In 1968, a group of engineers at a research facility in Dearborn, Michigan, submitted a technical paper to the Society of Automotive Engineers. The paper was cataloged as SAE paper 68334. The title was as dry as dust. Boundary lubrication characteristics of naturally occurring fatty acid esters in automatic transmission friction systems. On page 11 of that paper, the researchers documented their findings on tung oil specifically. They noted that tung oil in concentrations between 2 to 4% of total fluid volume produced a 39% reduction in friction surface [music] wear over a 500-hour dynamometer test on a hydromatic-style planetary gear [music] set. They noted that shift feel improved measurably within the first 50 operating hours. They noted that no adverse effects on seal integrity or fluid viscosity were observed at the tested concentrations. They recommended further study. That further study never received funding.
By 1971, the major automatic transmission fluid specifications issued by General Motors and Ford had been updated to require synthetic detergent additive packages that were and I want to be precise here, chemically incompatible with naturally occurring fatty acid esters. If you added tung oil to a transmission filled with the new specification fluid, the detergents would partially saponify the tung oil, creating a sludge that could clog the valve body. The technique was not banned by name. It was simply engineered out of compatibility by changing the fluid specification. If you are finding this useful, hit subscribe. I cover automotive knowledge that the industry does not want you to have every single week.
Three petroleum chemistry companies held the patents on those new additive packages. Those same companies contributed to the American Petroleum Institute's technical committee that reviewed and approved the new specification. The engineers who wrote SAE paper 68334 were not consulted during that review. I know this because I found the review minutes through a Freedom of Information Request to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The minutes are 43 pages long. The word tung does not appear once. You paid for that omission. >> [music] >> Every one of us did. We paid for it in transmission rebuilds, in fluid flush services that cost $200 and last 18 months, in the quiet understanding most of us have developed that our vehicles are designed to need professional attention on a schedule that benefits someone other than us. We paid for it in the assumption that a transmission with 180,000 miles is living on borrowed time, that slipping is inevitable, that the rebuild is coming. The Mennonite farmers in Lancaster County did not pay for it because they never stopped using what worked.
Now, >> [music] >> before I tell you exactly how to use this, I want to address the 12 states because this is the part that will make you either angry or skeptical, and you should be neither until you [music] understand what actually happened. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, [music] a number of states passed what were called automotive fluid compatibility statutes. The stated purpose was consumer protection. The actual effect was to prohibit the addition of any non-OEM specified substance [music] to a transmission fluid system in vehicles sold or serviced commercially [music] within those states. The states that adopted the strictest versions of these statutes, including California, >> [music] >> Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, [music] Minnesota, Maryland, and Virginia. 12 states total.
In practice, [music] what this means is that if you take your vehicle to a transmission shop in any of those 12 states [music] and the shop adds tung oil to your fluid, they are in violation of state commercial automotive service code. Individual use in your own vehicle in your own driveway is a separate question that varies by state, but the commercial prohibition effectively removed any financial incentive for a professional shop to ever learn about stock or recommend the technique. Shops learn what they can bill for. They cannot bill for something the state code prohibits them from applying.
There was a company in Ohio that found this out the hard way. In 1993, a small operation called Midwest Fluid Sciences out of Findlay, Ohio began marketing a tongue oil based transmission additive called Shift True. They sold it primarily through farm cooperatives and small town auto parts stores in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Their customers, mostly farmers and rural mechanics, reported significant improvements in shift quality and transmission longevity. They were getting reorders. They were growing. By 1996, Shift True had attracted the attention of two larger lubricant companies whose additive products competed in the same market segment. Both companies filed complaints with the Ohio Board of Motor Vehicle Repair claiming that Shift True constituted an unauthorized transmission fluid additive under Ohio Commercial Service Code. The complaints triggered an investigation. The investigation led to a cease and desist order against [music] any commercial distribution of Shift True for automotive use. The legal defense costs for Midwest Fluid Sciences exceeded their annual revenue. They closed in 1998. Their formula was never patented and never published. It disappeared into the same silence that swallowed SAE paper 6 80334.
I learned about Shift True from a retired fluid chemist named Harold Brewbaker who had briefly consulted for Midwest Fluid Sciences in 1995. I met Harold at a machinery auction in Darke County, Ohio two years ago. He told me about Shift True the way men of his generation tell stories they have kept to themselves for a long time. Carefully, accurately, without embellishment. He said the product worked. He said the formula was not complicated. He said the people who killed it knew exactly what they were doing and how much it would cost them and did it anyway. He said it the same way Tobias Esch talks about his grandfather's maintenance logs, like a fact that belongs to a record that nobody is bothering to keep anymore.
[music] Now, I want to give you what Tobias Esch gave me and I want to give you the specific version of it, not the general idea because the general idea without the specifics [music] is worthless. Subscribe before we get into this part because what comes next is the procedure and that is where most people find the most value.
First, sourcing. You want food grade refined tung oil, not polymerized, not Danish oil, which is a blend, not anything with added drying agents or petroleum distillates. The label should say pure tung oil and nothing else. Real Milk Paint Company out of Massachusetts ships it directly. Hope's 100% pure tung oil, available at most Woodcraft stores and online, is the correct product. Either of these will work. Avoid anything sold specifically as a finish accelerator or quick dry formula. Those have been modified in ways that will cause problems in a hot transmission.
Second, compatibility. Tung oil in its pure form [music] is compatible with modern full synthetic ATF, Dexron 6, Mercon 5, [music] and most CVT fluids. It is not compatible with type F fluid, which is still used in some older Fords and some racing applications. If your vehicle requires type F, do not use this technique. For everything else built after 1980, you are in the clear.
Third, quantity. The ratio that Tobias uses, the ratio that appears in Clarence Weavers original maintenance logs, which Tobias still has in a wooden box on his workbench, is 1 oz of tongue oil per quart of transmission fluid capacity, not fluid added, total fluid capacity. A typical 6-quart automatic transmission gets 6 oz of tongue oil. That is just under half a cup. This is not a lot. Do not exceed this ratio. More is not better. Tobias uses the phrase enough to coat and no more. That is the principle.
Fourth, application. You add the tongue oil directly to the transmission through the dipstick tube if your vehicle has one. If your vehicle has a sealed transmission without a dipstick, you add it during a fluid service through the fill port. You do not need to drop the pan. You do not need to change the filter first, though a fresh filter is never a bad idea. You start the engine. You let the transmission cycle through all gear positions, park to reverse to neutral to drive to first to second and back, holding each position for about 30 seconds. You drive normally for a week. The polymerization process under operating heat takes between 50 and 100 mi to fully establish. Do not judge the results in the first 20 mi.
Tobias told me something else. He said that for transmissions that are already slipping, not just feeling rough, but actively slipping under load, there is a second application he calls the double layer. You do the initial 6-oz treatment. You drive 200 mi. You come back and add another 3 oz, half the original dose. This second application bonds on top of the first layer and fills in any gaps in coverage on heavily worn friction surfaces. His records, handwritten in pencil in two composition notebooks going back to 1974, show that out of 31 transmissions he treated with the double layer technique after they had already begun slipping, 27 of them returned to normal shift function within 500 miles and did not require rebuild. That is not a controlled study, but 31 cases over 48 years in one man's handwritten records is not nothing. The four that did not respond all had the same failure mode. The friction material had worn past the steel substrate. The metal was touching metal with nothing left to bond to. Tung oil cannot rebuild what is already gone. Tobias is clear about this. He says the technique is maintenance and early intervention, not resurrection. If your transmission has been slipping for 2 years, you may have waited too long. If your transmission is slipping and you caught it early, you have time.
Now, let me address the objections because I know they are coming and they deserve real answers, not dismissals. The first one is the warranty argument. Yes, adding any non-specified substance to a transmission system [music] can theoretically be used by a manufacturer to deny a warranty claim. If your vehicle is still under the factory powertrain warranty, wait. >> [music] >> This technique is not designed for a truck with 12,000 mi and a 5-year coverage plan. It is designed for the transmission your warranty expired on 3 years ago. The one the service advisor told you to budget for. Those transmissions are outside the warranty conversation entirely. The dealership already walked away from that machine. Now, you get to decide what to do with it.
The second objection is seal damage. People who have watched other additive products swell or crack rubber seals are right to be cautious. Petroleum-based stop leak products, certain high-viscosity aftermarket additives, products that use aromatic solvents as carriers, these can absolutely damage transmission seals. Tung oil does not work that way. >> [music] >> It contains no aromatic solvents. It does not swell rubber. The SAE paper specifically noted no adverse effects on seal integrity at tested concentrations. Tobias has been using this in farm equipment with rubber sealed planetary units for going on 50 years. The seals are not the problem.
The third objection is the simpler one. Why have I never heard of this? And the answer to that question is the entire first half of this video. You have not heard of it because the people who stood to lose the most from you hearing about it had the resources and the regulatory access to make sure it never reached the mainstream automotive market. The information did not disappear because it stopped being true. It disappeared because it was too inconvenient to be profitable.
Here is what the chemical companies that killed Shift True and lobbied for those 12 state commercial prohibitions understood and were afraid you would figure out. A transmission that is properly maintained with a technique that costs $2 per service does not need a rebuild. A rebuild is a four-figure transaction. A fluid additive sold by a farm co-op is not. There is no margin in a transmission that runs forever. There is no service schedule built around a machine that does not break.
Tobias Esche's International Harvester, the one I watched him service on that first visit, has had the same transmission since 1979. It has never been rebuilt. The tractor runs four days a week pulling tillage equipment across ground that would destroy a modern transmission in three [music] seasons. Tobias does not worry about it. He said something to me as I was leaving the barn that first day that I have not stopped thinking about [music] since. He said, "The machine does not know what year it is. It only knows how you treated it."
I want to hear from you in the comments. Tell me the make, model, and mileage of the transmission you are going to try this on. I want to see how many of us are out here with machines the industry wrote off years ago still running, still shifting, [music] still refusing to become someone else's profit margin. Leave the comment. Do not just think about it. Type it out [music] because the next person who reads that thread needs to see that they are not alone in this. [music] And if you are the kind of person who believes that real mechanical knowledge has been quietly side lined to protect [music] someone else's revenue model, subscribe to this channel. We are not building a viewership here. We are building a community of people who [music] understand that self-sufficiency and mechanical knowledge are not hobbies. They are inheritance. They are the thing your grandfather [music] knew and his grandfather knew and that got quietly traded away for a service contract and a three-year warranty.
The next video I am releasing covers a radiator treatment from [music] the 1940s that the military used to keep truck cooling systems alive in desert conditions. [music] It cost 40 cents per gallon and it is still available at agricultural supply stores today. Nobody in mainstream automotive media will touch it because the cooling system service industry >> [music] >> is a billion-dollar business built on replacement parts that would not be necessary if you use the right maintenance chemistry. You are going to want to see that one. Until then, keep your transmission shifting, keep your money in your pocket, and keep listening to the men who still remember what they were taught before someone decided it was more profitable for them to forget.
Tobias Esch is still in Elizabethtown. He still repairs equipment out of that 1921 barn. His grandfather's sign still hangs on the wall and every transmission that comes through his door gets the same treatment it has gotten for 50 years. 1 oz per quart. >> [music] >> Let it cycle. Drive it a week. The knowledge is still alive because one man kept doing what his father taught him, even while the industry spent four decades telling him there was a better way. There was not a better way. >> [music] >> There was just a more expensive one.