hi, i just wanted to know a few things about stall converters. i realize they bring the rpms up so you can launch harder and stuff, but what i was wondering was....do you always have to launch at say 2200 rpms if its a 2200 stall. can you take off at liek 1000 or something lower when arent racing or anything. i'm not too familiar with how these things work. also, what if i'm just cruising or something, do i have to always keep the r's up over that specific rpm? just explain how these work for me real quick, thanks a lot!

jeff

 

very basically the stall speed is where the car will move or die, like when you hold the foot brake and mash the loud pedal. if you take off "normally" the car will just move like it always does. the higher the stall speed the more internal slippage there will be in the converter and more heat will be generated.

 

As ede said, how much a converter stalls / slips is a function of how much torque you are putting to it.

On launch at the track, i stall 3k+ with my vigilante.

If i'm just driving it around taking it easy i can kep the RPMs in the under 2k range.

I can pull out into traffic fast enough to make the average person **** their pants and keep the tach from hitting 2500.

It's just a matter of how hard you're hitting the gas pedal. And how good your torque converter is. Even though i have a 3000 stall converter, it's a 9.5" vigilante, which is a very efficient design. Thats why i can drive around and not have it feel 'that' much looser than stock and have a decent stall when i get into it. Now if you were to drive a 3000 stall 11 or 12 inch converter, it would feel a lot looser in normal driving because it would be a lot less efficient than a vigilante.

And thats where the expression "you get what you pay for" really shows it's salt. An inefficient (or cheap) torque converter will waste a lot of energy. It might launch pretty good, but it will be soft under light throttle, and also will probably slip a lot more in the high RPM range, and can even slow you down due to this wasted energy. A good converter shouldn't have such issues.

Good converters cost a lot of money, but talk to anyone with a vigilante or a yank and they'll tell you it was the best single mod they did.

 

To put it another way, with a stall speed of 2200 the engine will not see below 2200 rpm under full load. During normal driving the car will still move fine at 1000 rpm or lower, 3000 and above converters are another story, they will most likely move ok at 1200 rpm and feel loose below the stall speed.

 

I just got the TCI super street 3600 stall for my 700 R4. Anyone have experience with it. Good choice or no? cost me 500