1984 Trans AM. Does the tv cable have anything to do with the trans kickdown to a lower gear when wanting to say pass a slower vehicle?
When i got the car, as an example, proceeding from a stop at a red light to green, trans would be in 3rd gear by time reached the other side of the intersection
Mt tv cable is adjusted so that it does not shift from 1-2-3 way too soon. At acceleration, I can get a hard shift into 2nd gear like a shift kit in a TH350.
Now, I have to back way off the throttle before it will kick down
Ideas?

 

Yes of course. The transmission has exactly two "eyes" that it can look at the world with: the governor, which tells it how fast the vehicle is moving; and the TV cable, which tells it what the driver is trying to do at the moment. No idea why GM dropped the almost infallible vacuum modulator arrangement to transmit engine load information, and went backwards to the grossly inferior mechanical setup, butt w/e, It Is What It Is, no matter how stuuuuupid. We out here in goober land just have to make the best of a raw deal.

There's no such thing as "adjust" a 700 TV cable. Only SET. It has exactly ONE place that's right; all other possible places are ... not.

Sounds like yours is in the "not" category.

Stop "adjusting" it and instead, SET it where it belongs, and see if it works any better.

 

Sofakingdom;
Yesterday, I took the car out for a run and the kickdown, at various speeds, appears to be working properly. Why it appeared not to, who knows? Tkx for the response.
Personally, I prefer the old vacuum shifting of the TH350

 

So do I. It just makes more sense, in every possible way.

Besides the ... mechanical ... aspect of the crappy mechanical systems, any/all of which can break, bend, stretch, bind, fall off, ... and otherwise be mechanical, there's the whole problem of calibration of part motion to engine load. For example, if you install a larger or more powerful engine in a car, and then even if you set up the linkage or cable right in relation to throttle opening, the relationship of how far the throttle moves to the load put on the transmission, can change DRASTICALLY. Even something as simple as installing a larger throttle body can do that; the throttle moves x degrees and pulls the linkage y millimeters, butt with the old TB that meant the engine went from 5% power to 20% power, where now it means it went from 5% to 50%. The transmission can't know that suddenly it's getting twice as much torque, or whatever, applied to it; or that the y mm of cable pull means that the driver is trying to pass a semi, not just speed up a mile or 2 an hour.

I don't understand why GM went so far and hard BACKWARDS by doing that to the 700. I remember transmissions from the 50s and 60s with mechanical linkages (cast-iron Powerglide, the old 4-speed Hydramatic I had in a 59 Pontiac, etc.) and how crappy they were; first time I had to work on a Turbo 400, I was AMAZED at how much better overall the vacuum modulator worked. It was consistent, reliable, accurate, unaffected by anything in the outside world, and otherwise just BETTER than the old crap. Then GM regressed to the old Stone Age CRAP for the 700. Just seems stuuuuuuupid from every possible point of view.

 

Unfortunately there needed to be a better way to control the Transmission Line Pressure in a Low to No Vacuum situation.

This was for prolonging Transmission health even if engine performance was suffering...
A poorly running engine can burn up or damage a transmission without an excellent vacuum source as Line Pressure can be unpredictable.

 

With a vacuum modulator, if there's low/no vacuum for WHATEVER reason, the VM raises the line pressure as if the driver has their foot on the floor, therefore applies the clutches harder, and shifts all become later/faster/harder. Under those circumstances it does all the things that tend to protect a transmission in an over-powered situation, except, the transmission isn't under any stress at all to begin with, because the engine is fornicated. With a vacuum modulator and a "poorly running" engine, you end up with a transmission that prepares itself for 500 ft-lbs of torque, butt only gets 50 or whatever. In no case does it lead to the transmission getting damaged.

Not seeing how the stuuuuuuuuuuupid linkage from the Ice Age does anything any better than that, in a "poorly running" situation. Help me understand.