4T60E and other junk automatics

[Doubt_Incarnate]

OD is simply a referance to the gear ratio, 1:1 is drive, <1:1 is over drive.

lock up is lock up, i can feel all the shifts then the lockup in my explorer, feels like 6 gears. and with the "O/D off" button pushed for towing it eliminates 5th gear wich is my overdrive, and lock up still occurs in 4th (1:1 drive).

trans-go. thats another company with shift improver kits.

[sharkey]

gm 97+ went to pulse wicth modulated lockup in all fwd and the 4l60e transmissions. this means it applies it gradualy so you dont efeel it.

lockup is lockup, its not a gear. a 4 speed tranny will have 4 gears and lockup. it will shift 1-2-3-4-lockup. if you select drive or 3rd, it wil still shift 1-2-3-lockup.

[geoffinbc]

Man I don't know why you guys are eating trannies.

My moms 94 GA has nearly 200,000kms on it and the tranny has never been touched. Only fluid/filter. Thats not even the impressive part. What the trany went throught in its life, is. Both me and my bro learned to drive in that car. Once we got our licences we each drove it for a couple years until we got vehicles. We beat THE PISS out of that car. I mean neutral drops, burnouts full throttle runs on a regular basis. We would race our friends cars like the stupid youth we were. The tranny never had any upsets and it still shifts as firm as it did when new. Same with the 3100 it has not been touched. But then again it does not use Dexcool. My brother and I each roasted off a set of tires on that baby but the tranny is still perfect.

[sharkey]

congrats, you have the only good 4t60e that gm ever built.

some last a long time and dont have problems.

[Mitch DOHC]

my 94 cutlass had an gm replacment trans in it when i bought it 3 years ago.......it had 96k mileson it, and it went out at about 105k miles... i rebuilt a 4t60e i got out of a flipted 94 dohc monte...... it worked porblem free untill i riped the spider gears out at the drag strip about a year after i put it in.....at that piont i replaced the diff and havent had any problems sence..... probably because i bought a tahoe and only drive the cutty on sunney warm days on the weekends.

[96mcls]

Man I don't know why you guys are eating trannies.

i agree. my 4t60 was great till i distoyed it at 135K miles.

one of my sister's friends has a 95 GAGT with 4t60 and it has 240K and never had the fluid or filter changed. and she is pretty hard on the car, not real hard(no neutral drops or anything like that) but pretty far from a normal driver. also the 3100 is dead on reliable in her car, at a little under 200K miles the intake gaskets went for the first time. and that is the only problem i have ever seen her have with it.

i had a 700r4 with ~180K miles and the car was putting over 300HP at the wheels and the only reason it died was becuae i gave it it's first fluid and filter change with like 180K miles.

i don't know if saying GM makes bad transmissions is fully true, i, nor anyone i know have never really had any unexpected problems with any of them, fozda on the other hand... my mom has a 02 focus and the trans slips like no other, and also from time to time will pop into nuetral from drive, and the loving people a the ford dealership have no idea what causes it, they have replaced the cable, motor mounts and 3-4 other parts but it still does it, and all my freinds with mustangs have never had a trans last for more than 120K miles.

[sharkey]

no domestic car is realy built to last more than 100k miles anymore. people that can afford it buy a vehicle (or lease it) and keep it for under 5 years, then trade it in for something new. once the vehicle is through its warrenty period, the dealers can then make more money off of it.

about the only good import transmissions out there are honda and toyota. nissan and mazda all use jatco trannys, and they arent that good, and very expesive to fix. bmw uses gm and ZF trannys, the ZF being pretty good. VW likley have the worst trannys out there. they work ok for 150k miles, but when they die, its around $4-$5000 to rebuild due to the complexity.

there is far worse than gm trannys out there, but the gm's still arent that great. after working in the industry, ill never own an automatic, ever.

[Doubt_Incarnate]

what would it take to make an th125 into a manual shift?

[sharkey]

im not exactly sure what you would need to do. there are no stage 3 shift kits out there for the 125, as nobody realy wants a full manual 3spd fwd.

[Doubt_Incarnate]

yeah. i figured as much. what do they do to the tf727 and other rwd autos to make then manual shift?

[sharkey]

its mainly just changes in the valve body. they block the govoner, drill this hole, plug this hole, add a check ball here, use this specific valve here. every tranny is different.

with some research and being able to understand diagrams, its possible to come up with your own manual shift kit.

[RednBlack]

No chance for a drag auto? 2 speeder?

[RednBlack]

Man I don't know why you guys are eating trannies.

the tranny is still perfect.

I'm just plumb mean on trannies I guess. But this 3rd one is holding up very well.

For now. It hated the ford fluid at first. (Whined and cried) Then it got used to it. Make any sense? Now, it is sharp shift, no noise. Some due to tuning. 25% throttle to drop gears. And the more power I gain, sharper it shifts. 2nd gear scratch at 6000.

Needs more tweaking Ben.

[sharkey]

still to this day i do not understand why 2 speeds are used in drag cars. i have expirianced every every class of drag racing, and still cant figure it out. a powerglide, you have way to steep a first gear, it gets about half track, pulls the motor way down and then pulls through the top end. you need a very wide power band to make it work. i worked on a car that rad a glide in it (7 second car, big inch nitrous motor) and every time the 4th stage went on, it blew motors up. ended up convicing them to put a 3 speed in, and on 3 stages it went faster than it ever had before, and it stopping killing motors when the 4th stage came on. what was happening is when it shifter to high gear, it lugged the motor so hard it started detonating.

i know some will argue that a glide gives a softer launch, but if the car cant handle a higher gearing in low that a 3 speed offers, why not fix the problem and make the car hook, rather than mask the problem. and dont say its cheaper to throw a powerglide in, most of the glides that are being built are $3-5k, and most racers carry 3 of them. for that price, get a lencodrive or a bruno for $10k, and they will last forever in a door car (they last running 5.40 in an alky dragster)

[geoffinbc]

Yea we are running a 3 speed pneumatic shift Lenco. We carry a spare but we have yet to swap it at the track.

Your powerglide may have had shitty gears but there is a huge range of options offered for first gear. TCI offers them from 1.76 to 2.11. So if you went from say 1.76 to 1:1 in second that that is not a large jump at all. Sometimes you need that extra bit of gear to get you across the line. Plus if a racer is carrying alot of spares they may all have different ratios for different track conditions.