It's a long story but I'll try to keep it short. The torque converter in my TH700R4 broke at the hub (right at one of the notches, evidently common) causing all the fluid to leak out. I tried to put a new converter (Midwest 12" 2500) in with a new seal hoping that would fix it. Of course it did not because this breakage also typically causes the bushing in the pump to "walk" forward and keep the front seal from sealing. I took the trans to a shop.

The trans guy was going to put in a new bushing but my front pump was damaged so he installed a 10 vane replacement. I also had him install a Transgo 700-2&3 Reprogramming kit (bought on ebay) while he had it apart.

Put the trans in (again) and no leaks - good. On the test drive it acts very strange - I have to rev it WAY up to get it to move. TV Cable? Nope adjustment doesn't change anything. Is this the stall converter? No because reverse works fine. Turns out I have no 1st or 2nd gear - so I decide to take the whole car (not just the trans) back to the shop. Drove it there this morning a couple miles away (you transmission guys just cringed I know).

By driving the car I've burned something up. An auto trans cannot be started out in high gear like a manual (extreme slippage = extreme heat). I'll find out probably soon what's burnt - but the trans guy says the fluid has that burnt smell.

The lesson: If for ANY reason the trans loses any normal forward motion, or the tv cable is disconnected for whatever reason, DO NOT DRIVE the vehicle even a block.

Learn from my mistakes.
Chris
'78 Malibu 350/transmission-less
'68 Chevelle SS396

 

I should add some if not most of the blame for this lies with the transmission builder for building it such that it had no 1st and 2nd gear. How was I supposed to know not to drive it? It seems logical I'd expect 1st and 2nd to be there, and if not how would I know not to drive it like that?? He has said he'll "work with me" on it. To me this should mean I should pay for the parts needed to repair it (new bands maybe?) if anything. We'll see.

If your trans doesn't go after repairs DON'T try to drive it.

Chris

 

I'll reply to my own topic . . . again . . ha! the latest: My transmission was bastardized by GM (or it's reman. division). It had the early style 27 spline trans pump with a 30-spline input shaft (evidently a midyear '86 arrangement). When the trans guy put in the 10-vane later style pump (up from a 6-vane) it didn't allow the fluid to make the trans start out in 1st. He apologized for not identifying the problem but he says in 15 years rebuilding he's never seen this. The solution is my trans will have the early case with all late style internals. He also said the 3-4 bands looked like they'd "gotten hot" so they will be replaced even though it's possible they would be ok. I'm not sure what I'm going to have to pay for this but it's supposed to be finished today.

Maybe after all this I'll have a pretty stout TH700R4.
Chris

 

That is pretty ignorant of the trans builder, the 27 spline input is quite a bit smaller than the 30 spline, must have been a lot of slop in the input shaft to pump bushing, should have been noticed and corrected by who ever installed the converter. Almost sounds like he's making excuses for another (maybe larger) mistake.

 

Well I installed the converter . . . guess I didn't notice the difference. Now I have the car back and in Drive it won't start out in 1st and it's not shifting into 4th at all. The trans. guy told me about it not starting out in 1st and to manually shift it for a couple days as there is probably a small piece of gasket or something holding the valve up and "98%" of the the time driving it causes it to dislodge and be caught by the filter. I'm not sure about not having 4th.

I am SO tired of this transmission fiasco . . . at least the 2500 stall converter seems to be working right - the car winds right up into the powerband.

Chris

 

I hate to say this but I think you are being had and I also think that your new converter will likely get filled up with a bunch af crap as the tranny self destructs.

Not much of what you are saying makes sense. I am not blaming you but either you are not getting the story straight or he doesn't know what he's doing.

The 27 spline went away in late '84. 3rd gear start will NOT give you a high RPM but just the opposite it will bog down. Just imagine a standard that you put into a higher gear and take off. Until you get to 25-30 mph it won't feel normal at all.

Why no 1st or 4th? Who knows. Likely he drilled a wrong hole ot even put in a shift TV bushing indexed wrong- many things can cause a problem. If you paid little money then consider it a lesson learned. College courses cost a bundle and you didn't have to spend a semester there. If you paid a lot, well I guess you have to let him try again at his full expense.

Bottom line is I don't know where you got this guy but the tranny should have four forward gears, plus lock up and reverse. He didn't even give you that.

 

<<I hate to say this but I think you are being had and I also think that your new converter will likely get filled up with a bunch af crap as the tranny self destructs. >>

Stop trying to cheer me up.

<<Not much of what you are saying makes sense. I am not blaming you but either you are not getting the story straight or he doesn't know what he's doing.>>

Hopefully the full version (posts from another list) below will clear up confusion as to what happened. It is entirely possible this trans guy doesn't know what he's doing, I don't have the story straight, or that my transmission was previously owned by satan - or any combination of the three.

(1) Fresh out of a very bad sales meeting I go out to my car, start it up, rev it way up a few times & take off. About a block down the road my transmission (TH700R4) spews out all the ATF and the car won't move. I go to the gas station, put in 5 quarts and in another block it all leaks again. It is leaking from the front of the transmission. What do you guys think this is? Front Pump seal? Pan gasket?

(2) We rented a U-Haul 2 wheel dolly and trailered the 'Bu. $30 so this was by far the cheapest method to get it here. Found out what happened: Torque Converter broke at the one of the notches on the shaft - the vibration I had before probably made it brittle. So it seems everything was working fine - just pumping fluid out full speed where that chunk is missing. Now to look at converter options. Midwest has a lockup model for $700 so that's too high. Ebaymotors has a few in the $150 range - one is new 2200-2400 stall.

(3) Got my Midwest converter. After the usual amount of effort (a lot) got the transmission back in.

The local tranny guy said I needed to replace some bushing or it would still leak. Not feeling confident enough to take the pump out of the transmission (and it ever going back in) I just put a new front seal in with the new converter.

It still leaks - actually leak is not the right description - it pumps full speed all the fluid out. I could go into my state of mind but I think the negativity might overwhelm some.

Now the transmission comes back out and goes to the local tranny guy. I've thought about putting the old TH350. Having no car for the week (again) is going to suck. I wish my Chevelle was in good enough shape to drive.

(4) Called the trans. guy 4 times this past week to make sure everything was in place such that my trans would be ready by friday. The best laid plans...

My trans. needs a new pump ($70) and the guy didn't find this out until he started work on it friday morning (???). He won't have the part until monday afternoon . . .did I mention this is my daily driver - and I have to work on it 1.5 hours away?

(5) It never ends.

Trans in - no leaks - good.
Reverse works as do 3rd and 4th . . . no first or second . . .something tells me thats not what my Transgo kit was supposed to accomplish. Adjusting the tv cable to any position doesn't change anything, fluid level is fine.

(6) The trans. is full we double checked that. If what you're talking about is the round servo on the side of the trans thats what my transmission guy thinks it is as well. Possibly it didn't seat correctly. However, when I took it to him this morning he had a grim look after a short appraisal of the situation. He said that the problem WAS simple and he probably could have fixed it relatively easily - BUT I drove it to him and driving it (having to rev to 3-4k to get it to move) probably burnt something in the trans. He said the trans fluid smelled burnt - I couldn't really tell.

(7) The latest: My transmission was bastardized by GM (or it's reman. division it IS a GM remanufactured trans). It had the early style 27 spline trans pump with a 30-spline input shaft (evidently a midyear '86 arrangement?). When the trans guy put in the 10-vane later style pump (up from a 6-vane) it didn't allow the fluid to make the trans start out in 1st. He apologized for not identifying the problem but he says in
15 years rebuilding he's never seen this. The solution is my trans will have the early case with all late style internals. He also said the 3-4 bands looked like they'd "gotten hot" so they will be replaced even though it's possible they would be ok.

(8) It may really never end. Got the car back yesterday (paid $50 for parts replaced) and the trans. guy gave me a few "warnings". He said sometimes after a stop it wasn't downshifting back to 1st gear. He says 98% of the time this is because a small piece of debris (gasket, etc) has lodged in one of the valve bores.
Driving it (manually shifting) usually dislodges it and it's caught by the filter. Today when I drove it it did what he said, wouldn't drop down to 1st (if in Drive, I am manually shifting it almost every time - manually it goes into 1st fine) AND will not shift into 4th at all. Preliminary research on my part leads me to believe the no 4th gear has something to do with the servo on the side of the trans.

He did say if the downshift problem continues very long to bring it back to him and he would pull the valve body. What sucks is he's 1.5 hours away AND only open weekdays.

One positive note - the Midwest 2500 converter seems to be good, it lets the car wind up into the powerband quickly. Peg-leg burnouts might be all to easy now . . .


<<The 27 spline went away in late '84. 3rd gear start will NOT give you a high RPM but just the opposite it will bog down. Just imagine a standard that you put into a higher gear and take off. Until you get to 25-30 mph it won't feel normal at all.>>

GM reman could have put the 27-spline in. I had to rev it up to get it to move - extreme slippage - it was like it was sloooooowly going into third, but no not like starting out in 3rd like a manual trans.

<<Why no 1st or 4th? Who knows. Likely he drilled a wrong hole ot even put in a shift TV bushing indexed wrong- many things can cause a problem. If you paid little money then consider it a lesson learned. College courses cost a bundle and you didn't have to spend a semester there. If you paid a lot, well I guess you have to let him try again at his full expense.

Bottom line is I don't know where you got this guy but the tranny should have four forward gears, plus lock up and reverse. He didn't even give you that.>>

You're right he has shafted me in this deal even though I've only paid $270 to have the work done. But now I really don't see any other way (if this condition continues and doesn't cure itself - ha!) but to take it back to him until it's right (he said he would take care of it if the condition continued). If I take it to someone new I'm still out the time AND out additional $$.

Chris

 

Even though I don't want to say this I can't help but wonder why you bought a $700 converter and put it in a trans that broke a converter and wasn't rebuilt or even freshened up, you could have spent $700 on a rebuild and $270 on a decent converter. Unless you did the unthinkable and bought a used converter. And about my other response I said it wrong, there is no way to use a 30 sline input on a 27 spline pump, it won't fit. In mid '84 they changed to 30 spline and still used the 6 vane pump so maybe it wasn't "bastardized" after all.

What really happened in my honest opinion, the trans builder replaced the pump and didn't disassemble anything to clean it out, think about a broken converter hub wasting a pump, I picture a fair amount of metal particles in the entire trans, but thats just my opinion.

 

The converter was $200 (the race models are $700 didn't know that when I posted that message) 2500 stall lockup from Midwest. The pump was galled - I looked at it - it didn't look like chunks of the pump had been dug out more like it had been pounded by the previous converter (hope you can get the visual of what I mean there). I had a converter bolt come loose (and slot the flexplate - took me a while to figure out the problem) that caused a serious vibration - which may have also caused the chunk of the converter hub to break.

I guess it's possible my trans is mid '84 I seem to remember decoding the case to that years ago when I got it.

Chris

 

The converter was $200 (the race models are $700 didn't know that when I posted that message) 2500 stall lockup from Midwest. The pump was galled - I looked at it - it didn't look like chunks of the pump had been dug out more like it had been pounded by the previous converter (hope you can get the visual of what I mean there). I had a converter bolt come loose (and slot the flexplate - took me a while to figure out the problem) that caused a serious vibration - which may have also caused the chunk of the converter hub to break.

I guess it's possible my trans is mid '84 I seem to remember decoding the case to that years ago when I got it.

Chris

 

Step #4: "My trans. needs a new pump ($70) and the guy didn't find this out until he started work on it friday morning (???). He won't have the part until monday afternoon . . ."

Step #7: "My transmission was bastardized by GM (or it's reman. division it IS a GM remanufactured trans). It had the early style 27 spline trans pump with a 30-spline input shaft (evidently a midyear '86 arrangement?). When the trans guy put in the 10-vane later style pump (up from a 6-vane) it didn't allow the fluid to make the trans start out in 1st. He apologized for not identifying the problem but he says in"

Sorry but a I have seen people put a 27 spline in a 30 spline pump and it doesn't work. I forget exactly what the symptoms are but it is obvious and wouldn't have presumably gone years like this. HE replaced the pump (Step #4) but later (Step #7) the blame is put on GM? No, I have seen some junk GM Factory Remans (SRTA) but never that bad.

As I stated previously, you paid $cheap ("I've only paid $270 to have the work done"). Consider this a lesson learned and find someone who knows what they are doing to fix it right. Sorry.

 

blork

 

blork?

 

I hope you get it worked out...even if it was cheap the guy shouldnt have taken the job if he didnt have the skills.

good luck!

------------------
90 IROC
SuperRamed 406
Trickflow 23* heads

 

Thanks Mike I agree. I think he thought he had the skills - evidently he's built many 700s - but on mine he's really dropped the ball. He's used to B&M shift kits apparently and also hadn't seen a '84 1/2 TH700R4 with a 6-vane 30-spline pump.

The only way I can get 4th gear is if I'm coasting in 3rd and I let off the throttle, when I give it any throttle it goes back into 3rd. I have moved the tv cable all around - it looks like it might not be fully pulling the cable back in (?? there's slack in it at rest). I did set the cable by putting it to full throttle then pulled back on the cable housing as far as it would go. It doesn't downshift to 1st either (unless I manually put it into 1st, then I can put it back into drive and it starts out in 1st).

Chris

 

To adjust the TV Cable skip the book method and do this: Press the D button on the adjuster and loosen the cable setting. Now, have someone floor the gas pedal while you check to see if the throttle plate is open all the way. Usually they are off a little and will wiggle. Do whatever you have to do to get it open solid. Now, with the pedal still floored, press the D button and pull the cable casing (the black tube) back as hard as you can and release the button. You now have the engine, tranny and gas pedal all in sync at WOT. Mark the cable so if for some reason it gets moved you can know where to put it again. The problem with the 'self adjust method' is that it bends things and puts them permanently out of whack. It is also the full TV setting, which is theoretically what the GM method does.

 

Posts I made from another list and the responses:

(me) Had I known this fiasco was going to be like this the TH350 would have been back in the first weekend I had the problem and the TH700R4 would be at the bottom of a lake. My trans guy says he took the valvebody and servo out to doublecheck everything in the Transgo Reprogramming kit was installed correctly. After confirming that he called Transgo. *According to him* Transgo informs him that some year valvebodies just won't shift right after the install.

What?!?

That's nuts whether Transgo really said that or he's given up. If it's true why doesn't Transgo indicate the years it won't work on?? Because you can't remove the Reprogramming Kit. my trans guys says he'll install one of the many valvebodies he has with a B&M shift kit (which he is very familiar with) and that my cost should be minmal (which it should be). I'll get my old valvebody back as well.

He also mentioned as an example TCI's shift kit for the Ferd AOD trans works on some years and on some years the shifts are screwed up.

(Trans. guy on OR) I'm not going to try to proclaim being an expert, but I somehow
| believe that there is a cartfull of horse**** in this story. As I am sure
| you know I use transgo shift kits in every trans I build. I've installed
| them in all years of 700-R4's and 4L60E's and have not found an
| incompatiblilty problem. What I would guess has happened here is the
control
| valve has been swapped from another year of trans and this is where the
| problems begin. These transmissions are a bit complicated, and I've
| discovered you cannot take parts from old junk and patch it into them and
| hope it to work correctly. 700's have had 3 major design changes, 4L60e's
| have had 2 and they are still mostly the same internally with a good bit
of
| interchangablility, other than shift control parts. Never heard of the AOD
| problem either, been doing those awhile to, and in typical ford fashion,
| they have about a quarter of a million small pieces in them. I hope that
| this has proven at least slightly useful. I'll have to sit on the 700 for
| you, I've only 1 core right now and have not seen any available lately.

(me) Finally I have a transmission that has all the gears it's supposed to and doesn't hemorrhage all it's fluid out. It only took 6 weeks and $470+ to get it back on the road. The trans. guy finished it by 7pm last night and I drove it back to Atlanta. I HATE other people working on my car. Of course it is not perfect, he says the geometry on my tv cable is wrong - at the correct tv setting WOT pulls the cable further out (to an incorrect setting). He thinks a different bracket should help. For now I have a setting that I know works and after carefully documenting that setting I will work on changes.

He charged me nothing for adding one of his valvebodies and a B&M kit. He says it is a $55 kit so it may have been the Transpak. Overall I wasn't screwed by the deal but I probably will just buy a reman trans the next time this happens (hopefully never). I will be harassing Transgo about their kit and possibly sending it back to them regardless of them reimbursing me.


(me now) The trans seems to be working fine. The tv needs some minor adjusting but it's very close. The shifts are a bit soft but I don't care at this point, it is my daily driver that I use for work (possibly having clients as passengers). Hope I don't stir up too much with the transgo vs. b&m fiddledeedoo.

Chris

 

Different year VB's do act different in general. The later ones have a part throttle 3-2 where the earlier ones didn't also the WOT shift delay is different on the earier ones. This is not TransGO's fault and the kits DO work on all years. This is just how the tranny has evolved from GM over the years and yes the instructions do point out differences.

I repeat my previous advise: Get Another Builder!!! I don't know of any competent rebuilders that I would trust who would be pushing B&M stuff.

[This message has been edited by transfixleo (edited October 29, 2001).]

 

In my 24+ years (of trans rebuilding) there has never been a transmission builder who "prefers" B&M products in "anything" that I have talked to.

 

Sound very impatient. Ya say the TV cable
still isn't adjusted right but you drive it to work anyways. You soon will be getting the trans rebuilt again. Slow down, live longer.

 

As opposed to walking to work? Just like the first time I put the TH700R4 in I've have to tweek it a few times as I'm driving it. I'm not talking inches of travel on the cable I'm talking individual clicks - very small increments.

I have a Performer RPM intake, Road Demon carb and a holley 20-95 bracket, it's not stock and I now have some crappy aftermarket tv cable that is different from stock. Nothing is stock, my results may vary due to NON STOCK ITEMS. I have a B&M kit in my trans too and I think it will be mere moments before it's b&m-badness implodes.

Thanks for the help guys I really appreciate it everyone has been so helpful in their helpfull way that I feel I've had the kind of help that will help me to fix these problems and not just the uncaring kind of non-helpful help.

Thanks again,
CHRIS

 

I love doing this!!!
It has already been seconded so Ill third it on the B&M crap. Never had any good luck with their products.

------------------
Chronologically challenged. But still kicking!
'92 CAMARO RS
305 TBI 5/spd (now TPI)
B4C Alt.
Cam change:TRW 198/210 ,450/.460 114 LSA
Stock TBI manifolds
'85 IROC Ex.
14.94-92.00 mph
SPDC base and "350" Vortec coming soon!
'69 camaro-BB/Lenco,1050 dominators, /Pump Gas/no drugs 8.97-150+/3200lbs.
SoCal Thirdgen F-Bodies

 

I love doing this!!!
It has already been seconded so Ill third it on the helpful von helpenstein crap. Never had any good luck with their help.

Chris