| ATS Diesel Performance wanted to give you a look at the early designs of multi clutch Torque Converters. By doing so, this might help you understand how the TripleLok reached its current design.
The factory Ford torque converters had and still have some issues that haven't been addressed. For instance, the piston uses stamped thin tabs that will rattle and cut into the front cover. To help this problem Ford tried to slow it down by using spring tabs. Spring tabs would also fatigue and break off thereby flying around inside. As most would understand, this is not a good thing.
The leverage point of the tabs were also curving up, giving less leverage for full contact. Diameter of the torque converter was 12.5 inches, compared to our converter, which is 13.5 inches.
More contact was needed to support the tabs, along with keeping the steels from rattling like a jackhammer. Increasing the tab count was helpful with this. The international V8 diesels have more crankshaft pulsations per revolution and this can cause the pulses to hammer the plates much quicker. We have seen these converters coming in with clutch tabs cut clean through the front cover. This was always a complaint from the ford owners;
the infamous rattle at idle.
We wanted to make a multi-clutch torque converter that could handle these issues and wanted it to be better than what we have seen in the past, by a long shot. These converters were followed up with the early designs and R&D of the round tabs. Machining a straight flat in a blind end of the cover with an end mill leaves a radius (This didn’t do the job). The contact needed to be full and flat not round.
The round tabs would try and beat a flat naturally, this would cause the same problem as the factory but much faster. We (gave up) on this round tab design with good reasons; other shops picked up on our R&D failures.
 
These
photos show the results of the round tab cover & plates. This also causes tiny parts of metal to go flying. NOT GOOD. Click picture for larger view
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The pictures and information you've just read are the lessons learned. It's what lead us to move forward with the design of the new flanking tab.
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The ATS Square Tab Design - Click for larger view
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We gained full contact torsion load with the Triplelok™. Not only did we manage the design on our own but we also did our own machining. We have tried to stop others from using round tabs with no luck! The square tab design was the ultimate for power which is why ATS Diesel released this system in the Ford, Dodge, and Chevy with many more high HP applications.
We took the many years of building racing stall converters and put this design to them as well. Talk about a ride!!!!! This design goes in Corvettes, Lightning’s, Ect. We have just scratched the surface of power at the crankshaft with an auto transmission.
ATS feels stall speed and torque multiplication has been around for a long time with not that much more to be gained. This has been the racing industries common knowledge. How about when fluid energy has reached its max then lockup gets it all down to the ground. The real thing is starting with the most efficient fluid converter to get it moving, then lock it up for the ride.
New technology is always hard for some people to get used to. It increases tunnel vision sometimes. Or it puts the defense mechanisms in place. Just some new technology we wanted you to see. Hope you enjoy.
Don Ramer,
ATS Diesel Performance.
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