SACRILEGE!!!! You shall certainly burn in the warm place for suggesting that!

The torch and pitchfork crowd is now gathering, to speed you on your way to your untimely demise. We hope you enjoy your flight.



You do have a point though, not like it can get any more screwed up eh? Not like it's currently driveable.

 

Thanks both for the advice. He is going to drop the pan tomorrow and see what he finds. Right after the transmission was rebuilt, he put in a new filter and fresh fluid. Not the same as a flush I guess but the fluid didn't look too bad at that time. Something may have changed though. Thought of having him try cleaning the governors solenoid with the directions on here just to be sure that is not it.

Otherwise I think he is just going to go ahead and remove the transmission and have it rebuilt. I heard it is not too much to have done if you do the labor of removing and reinstalling. It can't be any worse to remove than pulling out the engine, can it??? I have a feeling we are about to find out. Just wanted to check the other options before we ended up doing that.

Again thanks for all the advice. He is getting alot of good experience at working on that engine. Maybe not worth it on a 97 but he got a job at an oil change place and I think telling them he had just done a rebuild may have helped get him the job. Kind of like a tuition cost I guess.

 

I would try everything else that has been suggested before dropping the trans......

Also, if he has rebuilt a motor successfully, he might wanna try and tackle the trans as well. There are some REALLY good resources available, including some walkthrus on how to do it. In the faq section, check out J415's transmission thread for some good links.

 

I'm not near as knowledgeable as the others on this thread I will readily admit.. I'll stand by for whatever backlash comes from saying this, and promptly back down if challenged:

It sounds like there is something in there clogging it up.. Before I'd flush it, and after I checked the pan for sinkers, I'd drop the valve body and carefully- very carefully- blow compressed air through the passages.. I'd be hoping wads of crap come out of it that doesn't resemble clutch surface.. I'm hoping that during your engine rebuild, and while the tranny was exposed to air, that you had stuff dry out and/or infiltrate into the tranny..

Once you started driving it, and it behaved as if your sensors/governors were disallowing a good shift (also indicative of a blockage/clog), that debris kept moving around until it found a good place to lodge.. in your valve body..

I'll back off my first option of total flush, and say pull the pan look for sinkers, if none- drop the valve body and use a compressor to blow it out.. if there is anything in there you'll see it come out.. if it does- button it back up, refill, and try it again..

if it works out for you- invest in AT+4.. do the good-ol-boy flush.. drive it a couple days, empty overnight- refill- drive.. go a week or so, same thing.. go another couple weeks, same thing.. if it survives that and still works, you may get some mileage yet from it. You may want to consider installing a magnetic plug in the pan, and lose the magnetic donut.. and- let it drain a good while, like, eight hours or so to get as much out as possible.. inspect what comes out.. the fluid will likely drain, but the clods of crap (if present) won't.. only a proper flush will get rid of that, but flushes are dangerous.. which is a shame.

 

But if wads of crap, friction material or otherwise, come out, the transmission is almost certainly a goner. If it's not friction material it's going to be steel, brass, aluminum, or maybe a plastic of some sort (broken piston or seal parts) which is a sign of hard parts gone away. If friction material is plugging the valve body, chances are that passages where check *****, valves, and pistons move have been eroded (think of a rock tumbler) and will leak.

It takes considerable heat to convince the volatiles in ATF to evaporate -- right around the temperature at which the Trans Temp light comes on. Just sitting around in the air while the engine is rebuilt isn't going to do it.

It's likely that if he doesn't find a band anchor and/or a broken band in the pan, it's rebuild time.

JulieC: Removing and replacing a transmission is somewhat difficult just because it's big and heavy and some of the hardware is in hard to reach places, but there's not a whole lot of technical knowledge needed. The most important technical details are to ensure that the torque converter is removed and reinstalled with the transmission and not left hanging on the flex ("drive") plate, and when going back in that it's properly stabbed into the front pump. Also: lightly buff the pilot hole (where the nose of the converter goes) in the crankshaft with emery cloth and lightly oil that newly clean surface, and use the jack to align the transmission with the engine rather than relying upon the converter housing bolts to pull it into position. Oh, and the transmission cross member can be a challenge if you try to move it into place by driving it upward -- it should be positioned between the frame rails behind its installed location and then driven forward.

What I like to do to make alignment during reinstallation easier is to find a few bolts of the appropriate thread size/pitch with short threads/long shanks, cut the heads off, cut screwdriver slots into the shank ends, then bevel those ends a bit. I'll thread those into the engine block as guides for the converter housing, and once it's all lined up install bolts in the remaining holes to hold everything in place. Then unscrew the homemade guides and get those bolts into place. This can be a real time and frustration saver.

If it's 4WD, it's easier to remove the transfer case before the transmission, and install it after, rather than leaving it bolted to the transmission. (This is one of those cases in which I rarely take my own advice...) Also, if it's 4WD, he'll want to install one of these while the transfer case is out.

Oh yeah: If it's rebuild time, it's also new torque converter time. Installing the old converter on a new transmission is always a bad idea because any gunk that's in it will be pumped right into the new transmission.

When the fresh rebuild goes in and the engine is started to do the initial ATF fill, it's vital that the first shift into gear is very quickly from Park to Neutral, with no hesitation at all getting past Reverse. The first shift into a drive gear should be a forward drive gear, with Reverse not engaged even briefly until after the transmission is filled/nearly filled. There's a piston in there that is prone to cocking in its bore if it's actuated before the transmission is filled, and that would mean diving back under the truck to fix the thing. Once the transmission is filled that worry goes away -- though on a stock 46R rebuild I am just paranoid enough that at cold start I always shift from Park to Neutral and let it run for 10 seconds or so, then hit a forward gear for a few seconds before engaging Reverse. It's irrational paranoia but it makes me feel better to do it.

Best of luck to you/yours!

 

yup yup and yup... I just got body slammed.. but I learned good stuff too.. especially about dealing with a freshly rebuilt tranny.. didn't know any of that.. cool..

 

Nah, that wasn't a body slam at all, no offense of any kind intended. Just a note about some of the stuff I've learned over the years and too damned many transmission remove/rebuild/replace cycles.

 

Finally he got to drop the pan tonight. No chunks in there but quite a bit of black sludge and some metal flakes. The filter was changed right after the engine was rebuilt. What would be the best way to get it cleaned out? I was thinking he should change the filter again (he's taking that off now) and fill it full of fresh fluid. Also clean out the pan before reinstalling. Does that sound like a good first step or do you think he needs to remove the valve body and flush out? Also since he is in there, think it is worth changing out the Governors Solenoid and Sensor or would that not be related to the problem?

 

black sludge ok, metal chucks not. might be time for the rebuild.

 

While he has the pan off, clean the governor pressure solenoid as well. There is a walkthru in the faq section here for it.