GregBBRD

No point in having this thing drip on you, while you fuss with the valve body....

Time for the spare.....the fat lady has already sung, left the building, and is at home, drinking a glass of wine.

Tony

I hear ya and I'm actually having a glass of wine.
Ive never had a valve body apart so i look at this as a good chance to have a look inside one..post some pics etc No harm no foul if it doesn't work when it goes back in.
However, if it does work and my car does shift "normally", then i know what my issue(s) was and i can pull the tranny with some peace of mind knowing what was wrong to begin with...its just old and worn out.

The last 20k miles have not been easy ones on it at times.


Onward.

Tony

cracked open the valve body last night.

Yup..its dirty.

Organization of parts is the key and LOTS of pictures. Im actually surprised it even would shift out of park seeing what i have seen through all this so far!!

Bill Ball

That's an impressive amount of sludge! It's as if the clutch plates and bands turned into dust. I was surprised how fresh mine looked when I opened it up at last fall at ~240K miles.

BC

There's gold in dem der hills!

Wow. That is spectacular.

Tony

Seeing all that crap and these "needle" holes and the small screen filter....
(that is the tip of a needle in the picture)

all cleaned up now and with a very deep breathe, ready to put back together


(FYI..dont use that last picture as an assembly reference...there are springs/parts out of order)

G8RB8

If you don't find what you need for the fix HERE and you do find it somewhere else please link to it.

Bill Ball

Tony: What's to prevent sludge and debris elsewhere in the tranny and fluid lines from refilling the valve body on start-up?

Tony

Nothing as far as I know.
It wont be as dirty as it was, that's for sure and it was "driveable" before .. I just want to see if this fixes the shifting problem I was having. if it does great, then the tranny comes out and I rebuild it knowing in some way what was causing the problem..if not...it still has to come out, I cant drive around with it in its current state internally.

Bill Ball

Fair enough. I suppose too if it still has some shift issues, depending on what they are, that could lead you to re-examine some of the shift valves you cleaned up.

SMTCapeCod

Was there a road test following the inspection and clean up of the valve body, or did you opt for rebuild?

Tony

Yup..transmission ran and shifted flawlessly after I did this to the valve body and used a new filter and fluid. I drove it for a couple hundred miles as I normally would and it never missed a beat. It wasn't babied either. So...I was happy knowing what the cause of my shifting issue was. The transmsion has been removed as the clutch/band friction material was obviously worn and wearing There was no way I wanted to drive it any longer than I had to in the condition it was in. I will rebuild it all at some point.

I have since installed a spare unit with LSD and did a whole bunch of other things while on the job. converter bearings, seal, wheel bearings, parking brake etc.....the new "used"(spare) transmission shifts great as well and Im loving how the LSD helps the car hook up.

Don't be intimidated by rebuilding the valve body..its easy. Just be sure to record or somehow document the process so reassembly is easy.
one big TIP...be sure you flip the vlave body over before splitting the halves..the intermediate plate will hold the ***** in place and pay attention to the details of how items are arranged.

David L. Lutz

Tony I have been following your thread on your tranny delima and thank you for sharing this with us.

I too am faced with this idea to move forward and swap my rebuilt LDS unit and retire my orginal autobox with 91000miles that by the way does not leak, shifts great seems to have no problems except no LSD When I installed the SC it was the plan to continue to beef up the tranny and move to an LSD, mainly for what you are experenceing now with the hook up with the pavement.

One question I do have is did you drop the tranny, converter, and torque tube as one and leaving the bell housing attached to the engine block?

Any tips here for a man about to take this jump again? I really need to move in the direction that is the most time sensitive .

Thanks again
David

Tony

yup..

... about 5yrs ago or so when I pulled the torque tube and the engine etc etc for a different thing, I cut a section out of the lower bell housing.
Now to drop the transmission I don't have to deal with the upper bell housing bolts on the engine. On my car they are impossible to get at unless I remove my supercharger intake...which requires, the supercharger to come out...it would be like pulling a thread on a sweater if you get the idea. I didn't want to deal with it.

the cut on the bell housing allowed me to drop the shaft of the TT and the entire assembly straight down. I loosened the fwd pinch bolt....removed the 6 flex plate bolts..slid the collar and flexplate back on the shaft ..removed the easily accessible TT to bell housing bolts..and lowered it through the gap I made with the cut.
The transmission was supported with a jack as was the front of the TT...just took my time and lowered it all as a single unit (the crossmember/suspension was already out)

Sticky wicket in it all is the mounting bolt for the Bowden cable on the torque converter cover. I used a 10mm socket on a 1/4 drive, a few extensions and a universal joint at the front.

video is worth more than a 1000 words.

Glen McCartney

I didn't remove the TT when I pulled my trans. I removed the air cleaner to allow engine to rotate down in back, lowered the trans enough to remove the upper TT to trans bolts, then pulled the trans back and out. More than one way to skin a cat.