- bangs the starter when starting cold (spins endlessly fine with engine relay removed), starts fine when hot
- Has a lumbering idle in drive (cleans up as engine warms up) and immediately stalls in reverse (doesn't change)
- park and neutral are fine.
- Rad fan shuts down when stalls in reverse
- No power from 1800 up, starts pinging badly at 2000 RPM

Thinking I may have nicked the crank position sensor putting the trans back in after the convertor swap. We had a hell of a time getting it back in because the alignment dowels are so short, so definitely a possibility.

Banging the starter and pinging at low-ish RPM are evident of advanced timing. But I'm not sure why it stalls in reverse, and the radiator fan shuts off too, like the key gets turned off/PCM shuts down. fuel pump stays running though. I can start it right back up no problem.

If I bring the rpm up to around 1100 before going into reverse, it won't stall, but i have to keep the RPM's up the whole time i'm in reverse to keep it running. Likewise in drive, idle's fine if I bring it up to around 600-700 or so.

Old convertor stalled to 1400, this one is at 2,000. Not bad considering i asked for 2100-2200 blind.

Is it the nature of the beast with putting a high stall verter in? If so, how can I make it behave?

 

No, the new torque converter shouldn't make it do any of that.

But I don't have much to offer in the way of ideas. The crank sensor comes out pretty easily, so I would check that first.

 

Try this. This has happen to everyone, Replace the crankshaft sensor. The wire sometimes get pinched between the transmission bellhousing and the engine block. This is better than removing the transmission. What i do now when the transmission is out of the truck. I get a tie strap and tie strap the wire to the oil pressure switch. This keep the wire from been pinched.

 

thanks MT,

I'm definitely going to pull the sensor and look at it. I've seen several posts that stalling in reverse is caused by this sensor, and every post has had a puzzling answer: Why only reverse, out of a simple hall sensor?

I know that the line pressure spikes to 350+psi in reverse and can sometimes hydraulically lock up the convertor and cause stalling, I'm hoping that is not the problem in my case.

 

getting codes 1988 and 1391. Trip to NAPA for a crank sensor, it looks like.