Let me start by saying sorry I haven�t posted anything in a very long time. I have just been so busy with other things in life. After all these years I still have my old baby third gen trans am after 15 years. Anyway excuse the rant, I was about to put my car away for the winter on the Saturday following Halloween when I pulled onto the highway going about 55 I speeded up to pass and all of a sudden it felt like car was in neutral . Below I will explain what I�m guessing might be the potential cause

1) we had some flooding in central New York and I had to drive thru some puddles I was very careful and have done this before I know it�s very risky I had to get home Halloween night from a family gathering.

2) I drove to and from work on Friday with no problems I even had to find alternate routes to get to work so I nearly doubled my commute miles to about 30 miles

3) Saturday morning out of nowhere my transmission just went dead and I had to get it towed. I tried shifting my gears manually and nothing. I can�t get the car over 5 mph.

4) I always maintained the transmission and the entire car with synthetic fluids and it always shifted like butter. I guess the proximity to the flooding and and transmission problems has got me OCD panicking. I feel like such an idiot maybe I should of stayed home. The car has got about 190k

In closing I�m thinking it might be something simple like the governor or throttle valve. I mean there was no warning signs or slipping . I would greatly appreciate some help

 

Pull the trans dipstick and note the color and odor of the fluid. If it's not red, and has a 'burnt' smell, it's likely the trans has suffered a complete failure. At 190K, it did well to last that long.

 

I looked at the dipstick and it seems normal in color and smell. I guess the next thing to do is check for line pressure I just haven’t had the time to look at it thoroughly it’s just sitting for the season.

 

This would be the logical next step.

 

Sure sounds like a dead pump....... This one gave up on me while highway driving @ 75MPH about a month ago.

 

I guess one way to test for a bad pump is disconnect the upper cooler line and see if it spits into a jar??

 

The cooler is not high pressure so that might not tell the whole story. Unless there is zero flow. That's clearly a problem.

GD

 

No; that's not a valid test of line pressure. You'll need to obtain a 0-300 pressure gauge and fittings to attach to the line pressure test port on the side of the transmission to verify actual pump pressure.

 

If your pump looks like mine on the inside,....... There will be no pressure.

I didn't see this earlier,..... If the tranny moved the car at all then it's probably not a bad pump. I've had 3-4 vehicles with a dead pump and none of them ever moved a single inch - in any gear - when the tranny pump was dead.

 

I just went and checked the pressures according to the ATSG manual and they are all within spec.
I also pulled the governor and the plastic gear looks brand new. It seems that the center plunger in the governor is not moving up and down smoothly it’s kind of binding a little when I move the weights up and down. Maybe it’s got gunk in it ??

 

The governor would not have caused a sudden loss of forward power at 55 mph. The governor only regulates when shifts occur. It has nothing to do with gear engagement.

Sounds to me like it's suffered a major internal failure. My 86 blew the snap ring lugs out of the forward drum due to fatigue failure at 165k miles. The symptoms were similar. You have 190k. It's almost certainly a hard component failure. These transmissions are mostly aluminum and it does eventually fatigue and fail. Time for a rebuild.

GD

 

I just would like to make sure before I pull the tranny is there anything further I could do. I have built many engines and rear ends and I did a 4L60E about 8 years ago with the help of my uncle. I am not the greatest when diagnosing transmissions. I somewhat remember the 4L60E had some kind of o-ring that ruptured I actually bought the truck with a transmission out already.

 

It doesn't move in any gear. You have checked the fluid and line pressure....

At this point you can drop the pan and check for debris, etc, but frankly there's not much left. There's virtually nothing that can cause this symptom that can be serviced without a tear down. It's not an electronically controlled trans.....

Trans needs to come out and get torn down.

GD

 

Ok thank you I guess I’ll be shopping around for a rebuild kit and some parts. Can you recommend some good well known parts that other members have used. The last time I bought parts was about 8 years ago. It was from a local transmission shop the parts seemed ok and the price was reasonable but their parts were more geared for stock oem cars with low hp. Maybe a budget of around $700 ??? should do it. I bought my car in 2005 with 120k and this is the original transmission

 

Sorry I forgot to mention, I understand at this point there’s a very good chance my transmission is toast. I previously stated that I could not get my car over “5mph” I remember I wasn’t really pushing the gas really hard I was afraid I like was going to damage something further when I was limping it into my garage.
For comparison to before this all happened if I were to approximate the accelerator travel distance to the floor I would say maybe 15-20 miles per hour. I’m sorry if I was misleading I know there are some people out there claiming they were able to get the governor to catch when revving
to high rpms and the problems somehow corrected itself. Also, I do remember before when I shifted in reverse my car would have that really strong lunge feeling maybe due to the 3:42 gears I swapped in years ago

 

Well here is an update. I went ahead and started tearing into my transmission so far here is what I found in the pictures.

Here is the 2-4 band, does it look it’s burned???

The drum has got a little blueing??

With this I’m wondering if there is supposed to be another metal tab on the right that could of broke off

 

I’m thinking it could have been the torque converter that went out. I did see some black gunk in the pan. I really don’t want to go crazy in the rebuild I just don’t have a ton of cash. I’m guessing I could probably get away with clutches,steels.bushings,bearings,pump rebuild. Also maybe a better sunshell. I’m not looking for a shift kit as it shifted great before

 

Hello everyone I have been posting on many related threads about my progress in the rebuild. Until it just occurred to me that I should revisit this old thread and just talk about as to what could of been the actual failure. I really!! want to get this 100% right before I put this thing back in the car. I understand I have to expect possible problems that may occur. I�m leaning towards the torque convertor at this point as I did find some clutch pack sludge when I tore it down. Attached are pics that I posted before of the pump which I thought could be the no 2 culprit

 

Based on symptoms, especially car not going over 5mph, it almost sounds like the stator clutch in the torque converter failed.

 

In the course of any transmission rebuild or replacement, you should ALWAYS rebuild or replace the torque converter anyway since they can be contaminated and can't be inspected or cleaned properly without being cut open. So I would either send it off for rebuild, or just buy a new one and trash it.

I don't see any smoking gun in those pictures. The pump looks ok and you checked the pressure so......

GD

 

Agreed. Search classifieds here, CG and FBMP. You might get lucky and find a crackhead deal on a 9 or 10" converter. The difference in performance is night and day over a 12".