well after a day of calling around and being on the phone, i have finally made my decisions on my tranny build.

the list of places i called and talked for opinions and info was: Excell in Red Deer, Armor Inc, Goerend, DTT, Opie, and Source Automotive.

After all said and done, here is what I have decided to do:

Take it to Mel/Scott at Excell and have them do the teardown/rebuild.
I will be supplying them with a converter, input shaft, output shaft, and flexplate. Everything else will be supplied/provided from them or whoever they usually use.
The converter will be a Goerend.
The shafts are Industrial Engineering (Opie) billet pieces.
The flexplate is from Source Automotive and is laminated piece instead of billet.

Wrong decisions or right decisions . . . . I don't know, I guess we'll find out. What do you guys think? Any thought or opinions good or bad are more than welcome . . .

 

So Opie will send you stuff from the US but not to anyone else in Canada??




Cant go wrong with Goerend or Opie parts.


Congrats - want to loan me some $$??

 

i am buying the shafts through Source Automotive . . . should have clarified that.

i have no more money to loan! this tranny building gets expensive fast!

 

i talked to Opie about shipping into Canada, here is what he said in a nutshell (not ver batem):

- he was getting big back-charges from UPS/couriers on canadian shipments for some reason - i didn't ask details
- the time it takes him to package and then long line waits at the USPS outlets is NOT very cost efficient for him.
- these are a couple reasons he outsources his transmission components to be sold
- he is currently looking for someone to sell the mitusa kits for him - then i'm sure getting them up here will be no issue.
- he said he has very little time right now to make the mitusa kits, just not enough hours in a day it sounds like.
- he and a CDN customer also lost a pump in shipping with USPS

 

CONGRATS----Sound like you have gone with one the best---"pickens" are slim up here---will Excell warranty everything/stand behind there work????What is the warranty on a built tranny????Right now/one day i"m leaning toward DTT in BC.What did DTT have to say???? (i have family located close so i can bunk with them)Bill seems to stand behind his products, something you don't see much in Alberta---seems like some take the $$$$ and run/make excuses if there ever is a problem after the install.Its nice to have a built tranny especially after dropping so much coin-------I wish/I wish/I wish.Post your reviews after the install.DW

 

excell will warranty there own work, but not the products i am providing them. they will not warranty anything caused by the products i supply them. he said himself though - that is a pretty big 'IF' something should fail . . .

believe it or not, excell had the worst warranty of everyone i talked to. IF i heard him correctly over the phone, it is only 1 year/20,000km. everyone else offered warranties much higher.

the reason i went with excell despite this is because they were the ones who seemed to exlplain everything to me without me having to ask. i also have never heard one bad thing about them on the forums (but the name doesn't make it on the forums very often either). i know jamie has nothing but good to say about them, and he has some put up some pretty high numbers.

i talked to DTT and basically got prices and what they use internally - certainly a contender . . . but excell had awesome customer service. never once got or sounded annoyed with my multiple phone calls.

 

Yikes, I would be worried with that short of a warrenty, I had a 3yr/160k with my Goerend. Wonder why theirs is so short??

 

i was worried too, but with warranty work on goerend the customer has to pay freight both ways. excell is only 1.5 hours away. they also said they are running plenty of built trannys behind high HP trucks and haven't had any issues as long as the customer does routine adjustments, fluid/filter changes.

 

Strange, when I blew up my Goerend (spring failure inside the valve body) they paid 100% of all the shipping charges. Maybe they changed their policy since then??
Armor is also a Goerend dealer and will take care of warranty work on their tranny's so i've been told...

Either way I hope all goes well for ya, buying a built tranny is a hard pill to swallow!

 

hmmm, maybe i didn't hear right. but i only asked about convertors and both goerend and armor said i would have to pay freight for warranty work on the convertor . . . i never asked in regards to a full tranny.

 

Jason, you getting an Opie fat shaft and his converter? He uses a bigger diameter shaft, so you can only use his shafts and his converter. You should call Ultimate Transmission out of Boise, Idaho, ask for Dave. He building my race transmission. http://ultimatetransmission.com/Home_Page.html

DTT does make for a nice shifting transmission and its taken my abuse for three years now. I install my own transmissions for both rides.

 

mike -
no, not using his fatshaft. just his regular billet shafts for direct replacement of OEM.

 

Who's converter? What the stall rpm and a triple disk? I like 1800 rpm's and a triple disk. You going with billet shafts for all three shafts? I'm running one on the input and output on the 02 and the other truck, they are fat shafts on the input/intermediate. A normal billet shaft on the output. A full manual shift valve body and a 3k stall converter. The deal is what ever I break they fix for me. As long as they don't get all bent up that I plan to destroy the race transmission this year.

 

i will be using a triple disc goerend converter. i don't know the stall speed. i am only going with input/output for billet. i don't think billet intermediate is necessary for me . . .

that's a hell of a deal - you break it, we'll fix it!

 

As they should. I will be out the price on parts, but that racing. If I break the hard parts (shafts, Opie goes builds me a better shaft), its on my buck. Soft parts, its on theirs. Dave seems like a decent guy, hard core racer. I've been kicking a few tires.

If they want to build the tuffest transmission going, it has to survive my abuse at the track, but I plan to do some wicked hard 30+psi boost launches and get the front wheel into the air for most of the 60ft. If I break stuff, so be it.