Alemite appears to be the name of the company that invented zerk
fittings

http://www.alemite.com/catalog/details.aspx?identifier=fittings

cuhulin@webtv.net wrote in news:5738-46300771-99@storefull-
3257.bay.webtv.net:

A Zerk fitting is not the same as an Alemite fitting.

I can't find my October/03 issue of "Skinned Knuckles" magazine. This issue
had an article on the three common sorts of grease fittings used on cars
through the ages. And that's the ONLY issue I can't find!

The magazine article had sketches of the three types of fittings side by
side.

As I remember, an Alemite fitting was straight, not "belled" the way a Zerk
is, and it had two pins extending radially from its diameter. These pins
engaged the grease gun, much as the pins on an 1157 light bulb engage its
socket.

Zerk and Alemite may be the same company now, but the fittings known by
those names are not the same.

Actually if you take a 727 or a TH400 apart, there's not a lot of excess
material in there, and they're not all that heavy so I don't think its a
question of "not knowing where to cut weight" at all. They KNEW-
engineers with slide-rules were often better than their CAD/CAM
dependent successors (and I say that as an engineer who never used a
slide rule...). I can roll under a car with an A-727 on a jack, then
transfer 2/3 of its weight to my chest and then bench-press the
bellhousing end of it up into position, and I'm a little guy who loathes
gyms. They just used to build them to last the life of the car, because
its easy to do that with a simple non-lockup convertor 3-speed. The
price is really that with all that extra clutch material in there, they
have more drag in 1st and 2nd gear when the clutches are disengaged (3rd
gear everything's locked solid). When they started reducing the number
of clutch plates and reducing clutch pack diameter to reduce the
disengaged drag from shearing the fluid is when reliability started
tanking. Somebody, right or wrong, decided that having a certain
percentage of transmissions fail before the rest of the car was "used
up" was an acceptable trade for higher fuel economy.

I think they've finally figured out how to make ultralight automatics
last by using the engine management system to throttle back the engine
during shifts. A 727 or TH400 was built to bring a 440 CID Mopar V8 or a
 Buick 455 V8 from redline down to 3000 RPM when it shifted gears,
WITHOUT closing the throttle. That's a lot of energy dumped into the
clutches during each shift. Avoid that requirement by only shifting when
the computer throttles back the engine, and you can drastically reduce
the size of the clutches without reducing the life of the transmission.
But automakers only really started doing that within the last 4-5 years.
 In the 90s, they would sometimes cut out alternate cylinders during
wide-open throttle upshifts, but now that most cars have servomotor
controlled throttle plates, they can throttle back on EVERY shift.

Having a 19 year old transmission leak is no big surprise (especially
if it sits a lot). But the Camry was only about 8 years old, but it
was high mileage. The d$%& Cressida transmission didn't leak, it just
shifted weird and started slipping. It was neither old nor high
mileage when it went bad.

Ed

if it was mostly 80mph there was no slipping in the trans an dit
should be just fine.
I did the drain and fill a few times and the first time I dropped the
pan and replaced the filter. After that just drain and fill. Fluid now
looks like new and the car still shifts like a new car.