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OK guys, I decided to drain the transmission early. I was planning on tinting my rear window, but I had to repair the defroster element, which needs 24 hours to dry, so I did this instead.
I got 2 quarts of Mobil1 fully synthetic ATF for $18, talk about wallet rape. I unscrewed the hex plug at the bottom of the transmission and I got six quarts of bright red fluid in the pan. It looked good as new, but I dumped it in the waste oil container and used 1.8 quarts of the brand new fluid to refill the transmission. A little bit of the growl came back, but not as much as I had remembered. Shifting effort decreased and everything seemed to be okay.
I decided to put down some numbers on my benchmark run to my favorite gun shop (can't have too much ammo). It's a 13 mile trip on a 65mph highway with very mild hills. I ran the test at 55mph steady state, in gear all the time, with the marker lights and DRLs, A/C off, AFR of 15.8:1 and tires at 44psi all around. AFR has been untouched for the past couple of tanks so I knew the SG was accurate.
I had acheived a best of 43.2mpg on this run before (return trip), but tonight my little 2.2L pushrod stomped its previous best with 45.0mpg to the gun store and 47.2 on the return trip!
A few caveats though... the back seat, rear deck and side plastic panels are out because I'm tinting the rear window, so maybe a weight reduction of ~40lbs is partially responsible, but either way, I was floating on a cloud seeing 46mpg for more than 2 seconds while coasting down a hill.
So like I said, after 30Kmi of mostly city driving, the fluid I drained was bright red, about the same viscosity as the new stuff, unburned and still had the smell of the new stuff. It didn't feel watery or otherwise compromised. I know what burnt fluid looks like, I've drained my automatic Cavalier before. That fluid was black and watery. I don't think the transmission sustained any damage, but it looks like the excessive fluid was a drag on it, making it act like a viscous coupling of some sort.
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