I believe the TC on the 1500 rams have a stall speed of 1200 RPM. I’m guessing on this speed because this seems to be when the truck starts to go. At 1200 RPM the engine isn’t making very much power. So my question is say you were trying to pull someone out. The truck is bogged down and won’t move. Your sitting at say 1300 rpm. Now if you had a switch to lock the TC and you flipped it what would happen? Would you destroy the clutches in the transmission? Would you get more of the power from the engine to the wheels allowing you to move a little and slowly increase the RPMs? Would the engine just die? I’m contemplating putting a switch to lock the TC when I want it to. I’m just not quite sure what the benefits are. My understanding is the transmission would act more like a manual when you had the TC locked. The only problem I see is that a manual transmission doesn’t have clutches inside of it like an automatic does. I would think that you could toast the Auto pretty easily if you forgot to unlock the TC when it was downshifting or up shifting. Any Thoughts on this?

 

Well here is the general idea.
The converter is designed to lock up to be more efficient for mpg. It is designed to lock up when the motor is NOT under stress to as you could say be more like a four speed and be solidly locked from motor to output shaft of trans. When the motor bogs down or is put under stress it unlocks to allow the torque converter to do it's job. Which on all auto's there is a slight amount of slippage. The GM and hot rodders have been putting switches on their engine swap vehicles for a while. This way they can use an overdrive trans for cruzing and lock or unlock the converter depending on how they are driving. Put a big block gas guzzler in it with 4.10 gears and while cruzing along at 55mph or more get the advantage of O/D and drop the RPM's. Around town or while playing leave it off so it won't bogg them downor kick in and out.

 

Based on doing full throttle acceleration runs from a rolling start up a steep hill years ago,
I believe that the 'stall speed' of the factory torque converter
on a 1995 46RH automatic transmission
is in the range of 1800 to 2000 rpm