Hi,

I'm new on this forum and new to Dodge, but have been working on my own cars for 30 years. Considering that the automatic transmission has been around since the 50's, I'm a bit surprised by all the tranny failures I have read about in these trucks. One would think that Dodge (Chrysler...whatever) is capable of designing a bullet proof automatic transmission, especially when it comes to how people perceive the quality of RAM trucks.

Now my question is; is it a problem with the tranny design or is it the way that the fluid is cooled and fed back into the tranny? I saw a few threads and/or articles that talk about the one-way valve on the radiator or tranny line. Is this the problem? Can it be corrected by running a tranny cooler?

If that is the case, then I would sure like to prevent tranny failure before it happens.

Thanks

 

The whole problem with Chrysler transmissions is that nobody maintained them when they were new.

 

All other companies have just as much tranny problems and it seems to me that it more so an abuse thing rather than just a overall bad design, and maybe they could have used stronger bands.

 

Are you talking about regular fluid and filter maintenance?

 

Thats just all the maintnance there is to a transmission.

 

I thought you might have been talking about band adjustments or something like that.

What about the one-way valve, tranny cooler etc? I suppose the failure of the one-way valve could be attributed to dirty fluid. Once the valve fails then you have no fluid cooling. Are the valves prone to failure? Should this part be replaced on a regular basis...can it be replaced?

Maybe I'm just being paraniod, but I would much rather change a valve than a transmission.

 

if you tow regularly or put it under heavy load alot, then get a tranny cooler,

the trannys vary. parts dont last forever. but i see that they last an avg. of about 150K which isnt to bad.

 

there are a couple design flaws. crap clutches, crap torque converters, the check valve clogging up and the factory transmission cooler (built into the radiator) has a lining inside it that can flake off and plug up the transmission.

and what purpl said, lack of a 24k mile (i think its 24k) fluid and filter change from the time it is new.

 

24K???? time to do mine in like 3K..i wont mess it up since its gunna be about 24K on my rebuilt tranny...

 

that atf 4 would get expensive doing it every 3k.
i just looked at the haynes manual, its 24000 miles. change the transmission and transfer case fluid and the transmission filter.