Hey all,

My trans bit the dust about a week ago. After calling around to a few shops and getting quotes on rebuilds, I decided to go the junkyard route. For $350 I got a trans with 60,000 miles on it that has been inspected and "tested", and comes with a 30 day warranty. I dropped my old one with some minor difficulties, and this morning finished putting the used one in. Used transmission came with a torque converter, so that is "new" too. I re-filled the trans with oil, let it idle for about 10 min, then tried to shift into gear. Nothing happened. When shifting back to park, there is a grinding noise, similar to when someone grinds a clutch. I checked the lever on the trans while someone else was shifting through PND21, that seems operational.

I was reading through the DIY about installing a torque converter, and I noticed it said you have to seat the torque converter on two sets of splines. I THINK i did that, but am not sure. I didn't have any real issues bolting the torque converter back onto the fly wheel, wouldn't there be clearance problems if the torque converter isn't seated right?

If i did seat the torque converter wrong, is it toast now? Do these symptoms sound familiar to anyone? Would that have fried anything else in the tranny?

Could it be a fluid issue? I unhooked the return line to flush out all the old fluid, and started refilling once I saw bright clear red fluid coming out of it. Initially, when unhooked, there wasn't a lot of fluid coming out of the return line, after 10-15 seconds, fluid started flowing at what I would consider a "normal" rate. Is it possible fluids not getting everywhere it needs to? What about the torque converter? I didn't top it off before install, there was already fluid in it. Doesn't it cycle through with the rest of the trans fluid?

I know this is a long list of questions, if there is any other info that I can provide that would help someone diagnose my problem, just let me know and I will add it.

Thanks all.

 

Did you check the level on the dipstick....?

Might not be enough fluid in there to activate the solenoid to put it into gear....

 

I did, it reads plenty full. Probably a little overfull right now.

 

Reading some more, really starting to seem like I somehow didn't get the tq converter seated correctly. Can anyone tell me if I would have been able to assemble the tq converter to the flywheel if was not seated properly?