I had an upgraded tc and vb in my truck until recently.They were definately a temporary fix and my tranny was completely worn out when they took it apart.This is with 20,000 miles on a fuel plate and 4k kit.Needless to say it now has a full transmission.In my opinion,if you have any sort of real power you are on borrowed time with just the basic tranny mods

 

i have been over 500 hp and 1000 tq for 3 years now. i have a stock tranny with a Goerend vb and tc. its been a great investment. i believe i saved alot of money going this route. and i do play hard with my truck.

 

Your missing the point. No, we all don't have wads of cash to throw at our trucks... but most of us have just enough to put the go fast parts on first(not the way to do it) and run them on a stock tranny. Then a guy's tranny goes out and hes in the situation where he has to spend the big bucks to get his truck on the road again... not to have a built tranny.


Believe me if I could go back and take all the money I've spent on stacks, tires, boxes, and what not... I'd put it towards having my tranny FULLY built. My converter slips bad now... my milage is toast and if some cocky slowstroke or duracrap pulls up to me I have to ignore him because the tranny can't put the power down...

 

Ok fellas, I have to chime in here, even though the thread has been inactive for a little while now.. Hope some people have it subscribed. I have been going through tranny hell for the past 6 or 7 months now. I will start from the beginning, so grab a cup of coffee. I really really hope that at lease one person on here will learn from my mistake so they dont have to go through what I am going through with trans.

It started with a Superchips set to performance + a diesel tug. I had the truck for about a month. I bought it used as a theft recovery, so god only knows what the thieves did to it. Anyway, yes of course I won the diesel tug...its a Dodge, what else would you expect? Oh yeah, as an added bonus, both chevys that I went up against broke their front axles!..lol stupid independent front ends. Ok ok, so the diesel tug is where it started to go, I think. My buddy kept telling me to put my money into the tranny and not the engine...did I listen..no of course not. I got me a nice new Power Puck to add to the stack as well... So now I added about 300hp or something like that. I dont know what that actually translates to at the wheels though. Regardless, its a lot of power on a heave truck, with big tires and heavy lead footed driver.

I started to feel slippage and gear hunting. First I did a band adjustment and a fluid/filter change. Did absolutely nothing at all to improve the slippage and hunting. I had some extra bucks laying around so I checked out PACT and ordered a clutch rebuild kit. It came with Red Eagle clutches and Kolen steels, new seals and some other little things. It was fairly priced at about $500. Keep in mind I have never done a tranny before, this was first time. Turns out that they forgot to send me the new low/reverse drum that is required for the aftermarket clutches. I didnt know this until I had the tranny in a million pieces. Its my daily driver so I had to put it back together with only one set of new clutches installed (direct drive). It held up for about a month before I was on the highway and it just about complete crapped out on me. If I didnt have my TC lockup switch I would have been in real bad shape. Got her home and ripped it all apart again. All the clutches, I say again, ALL the clutches were completely smoked. Some of them were actually fused together and melted to the drums. Time to replace EVERYTHING! I bought the kit from PACT to make it a Ramzilla. Cost about $2500 if I remember correctly. That kit comes with everything you can imagine. Billet shafts, TC, VB kit, drums...all of it. So I installed all that jazz and away I go....but not for long. About two months later reverse went out. Inspection showed that the low/reverse servo had blow an oring and the fluid was passing by it, not allowing for enough pressure to hold the band in reverse. Replaced the oring and it was good to go for about a week.. Same thing, blown oring. This time I replaced it with a really good thick oring and it was good to go.....for about a month. On my way back to CA from AZ the tranny completely crapped out again, in the middle of the desert. I was about 2.5 seconds away from setting the truck on fire. Had it towed to the nearest tranny shop and told him to build it tough as nails. $5,000 later, its good to go! until yesterday.... On my way home from the doctor and the tranny quit AGAIN!!!! At least its under warranty this time. Turns out the TC was shot and damaged the OD clutches this time. Its still in the shop and I should have it back on Tuesday.

So now I have a question for you guys... what could be making my tranny go out all the time? I dont have crazy amounts of HP.... Please help!!!

 

Was the cooler lines cleaned out or replaced? What about the check valve?

 

I cant answer that.. I know that when I did the rebuild, I didnt check them. I do have a trans temp gauge though and this time, when the TC when out, the temp never got above 160. I have a Magtech oil pan on it, the mega sized one, so my tranny holds 4.5 gallons of fluid which tends to stay cool. I was also on the highway going about 80, so there was much airflow. Now that I think about it, it doesn't make sense that the OD clutches went out. The tranny guy who has it now said the OD went out because the TC overheated thus causing the OD to overheat as well. Im still wondering if I just have too much power??? Thoughts?

 

wait a minute do you have your temp probe in the hot line or in the pan? my tranny runs any where from 180-270* i have it in the hot line...depends if i am towing, runing it hard or just driving in town. i was always told the trans temp shouldnt run higher than the engine temp. so is the clutches and tc slipping this bad to create this much heat. Yes its a stock trans. i dont have no money for a BUILT tranny.

 

yes mine is on the pan. you completely lost me on the rest of your post..I couldn't tell if you were asking me something or telling me something. my question was why did my OD get smoked and nothing else? it doesn't make sense considering its all the way in the back. I would think the heat from the TC going out would effect the direct clutches, not the OD.

 

So is the Oring your talking about a regular rubber Oring? I don't know about your year tranny but in my tranny there was no Orings on servo's. All sealing rings where teflon or steel. I would think if a rubber Oring blew out and a piece of rubber was floating around the whole system should have been cleaned out. The VB has some tiny fluid passages.

 

Yes, they are regular rubber orings. Well they have a special cupped side to them which catches the fluid and forces the oring to seal. That does make sense though, about the small ports on the VB. I guess its a moot point now, the tranny is in the shop getting a new TC, again.