This is a question for a friend of mine. He has an '89 Cavalier 4cyl automatic. Occasionally it will stall out when coming to a stop in drive. It will restart in park, but stalls again when he tries to put it in gear. If it sits for awhile, it will restart and drive normally. It sounds to me like a Torque Converter Clutch issue. My question is, should it be possible to just bypass (unplug) the lockup feature and drive around clutchless?? Specifically, where would the plug be located on the transmission to disconnect it, or where is the switch located to try to troubleshoot that end of things?

Thanks

 

Well, you could try unplugging it to eliminate that as the cause. The TCC is probbaly the only plug on it. If there are more than one, without a manual all i can tell you is that one of the pins will be hooked to terminal F of the ALDL.
It isn't necessarily the TCC though. On some cars GM put a PN switch that runs to the ECM. It uses that signal to determine some of the stuff the engine does. If that were the case with that car, then it is possible that something is whacky in the ECM, making it run like *** on the drive gear parameters.
...ed

 

Yep, the TCC is what is wrong with your friends trans. I have replaced tons of them.

You can just unplug it from the connector going into the transmission for now. It wil keep the TCC from coming on and locking up.

But it is only a 35 dollar part, and all you have to do is take the side cover off. Pretty simple.

I was talking to a GM engineer at work on day , and he mentioned that your trans fluid could overheat without the TCC. He mentioned something about the fluid in the converter.....getting hot from no TCC...

I would eventually get it fixed. 99 percent sure it wil fix it..

 

What Kevin said. There are too many Cavaliers running around with exactly the same problem, and every one I have heard that about the TCC solenoid was bad.