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I’ve tried many, many different fluids in many different cars. I tried Redline in two different cars and had no love for it in either one. In my opinion, it’s too slick. It doesn’t allow the synchros enough friction to function properly. It might be great stuff for racing crunch boxes, but I had no luck with it. It might work better with a friction additive, but who knows.
I would always stick with OEM fluid for at least the first 50k miles. After that point, however, synchros can start to show some wear and may benefit from a friction modified fluid like GM or Pennzoil Synchromesh. My 128i had 68k miles when I got it and it was starting to require a good deal of effort to shift. I found the Synchromesh helped some, but less than it has helped in other cars. My S197 Mustang is an exception. It had 4600 miles when I bought it and I instantly changed out the fluid first with Royal Purple. That was awful. Then I tried Redline. That didn’t help either. I went back to the stock Ford fluid and I still wasn’t happy. When I finally put GM Synchromesh in, everything was perfect.
Don’t be afraid to try different fluids. It’s neither hard nor very expensive to try different brands, but you really have no reason to change fluids until you notice a change in shifting performance. As to why your shifting got better when you went back to OEM, who knows. Maybe you had too many metal flakes in there and it just needed a change.
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