Alright, I bought a 91 dakota with the V8 and automatic transmission from a nice old man after coming home from a deployment to africa (its not my old Ram 50 that grandpa gave me, but she gets me around). Going home one evening in stop and go traffic on the highway, it suddenly started acting like it didn't want to let go of the clutch. Almost as if it was a manuel and I was forgeting to push in the clutch when I hit the brake. If i came to a complete stop the engine would shudder and die. If i put her in neutral before i slowed, she would idle fine. Now that I've got her parked at home I'm having problems getting her into drive or reverse after starting. She is acting as if she was a manuel and I'm dumping the clutch and stalling. If I give her some gas before trying to shift I can manage to take off but its so fast that I don't trust that I might hit somebody just backing out of my spot. After talking to the mechanics at the auto auction that I work at (good fellas, real smart and a couple in the military, one of whom is in my unit) they said to try changing my tranny fluid and check my TCC solinoid. Upon dropping my pan I discovered that the fluid had turned purple from its original red. I had a good look at the solinoid bracket and what wiring I could see and discovered that each wire had some form of large open crack or stripped area of insulation. I don't have access to a diagnostic tool and moving my truck is definatly out of the question.

What I'm wondering is if those exposed areas could have been wreaking havoc with my solinoids and if so, how do I drop the valve body without pulling the entire transmission?

 

http://transgoonline.com/TFOD_HD2Video.html

that video shows how to disassemble everything starting around the 5 minute mark.

There might be a test in the service manual that you can do with just a multimeter to check the tcc solenoid. If you fix the wiring and the soleniod is good and the problem is still there, make sure the TV cable is properly adjusted and the lever on the trans for the cable is not stuck. My truck used to stall when stopping and going into drive and it ended up being that the lever was stuck at about half throttle so the converter wouldn't disengage.

 

Thats exactly what I was looking for. When I get some time (probably wendesday) I'll pull what I need out and have my co-workers test both the solinoids and the wires. I'll post the results of that and how everything works after it's put togeather.

 

well some craziness happened but I finally got everything togeather and tried to have a go. Nogo. Tranny still acted like the torque converter clutch was engaged and when I tried to limp it back home from my friends driveway that I was forced to keep her at (long story), the tranny completely quit. Engine still ran but there was no power going to the wheels. I'm having a new transmission installed and hopefully the shop took a look and found out what gave out. The only good thing about this whole experiance is that I've gone from mostly knowing how an engine works and then the transmission being a magic box that did things to make you go faster, to the same knowledge of the engine and a fairly good idea of all the basic workings of both automatic and manual transmissions.