I'm having issues with my 96 Ram 1500, 5.2 auto 2wd. When I bought the truck it wouldn't upshift unless you let off the gas completely. I replaced the governor pressure solenoid, transducer, along with the TC lock up solenoid, and that fixed the shifting issues and the tranny worked perfectly, shifted just fine. BUT, then reverse started to act up. Initially it would hesitate going into reverse, taking 2 seconds or so to go in. Over time, it got worse, to the point now that it won't fully go into reverse unless you bring the RPM's up to approx 1500 or so for about 7-10 seconds and then it goes in. It will go in partially but won't fully engage unless you bring the RPM's up. Once it's in reverse it's fine, it doesn't slip once in gear. It still shifts perfectly other wise. I'm guessing it's a seal on the accumulator piston for reverse? How much are seal kits for a 46 RE?
I know the proper thing to do is take the tranny out, get it rebuilt blah blah, but the truck has 150,00 miles (240,000 km's for my metric friends) and is only used for banging around in, so that's not going to happen ($1000 for a rebuild around here)unless it's absolutely necessary, and then it'll be a used tranny (although those seem like hen teeth).

Try some of this; http://www.seafoamsales.com/trans-tune.html

Tried it, a couple of times, helped abit at first but it didn't do the trick, thanks for the reply though

Idle the truck in neutral for about 1 minute. That will get all the fluid moving and you should be able to catch "R". This works more noticible on a cold start when fluid has drained out overnight.

Hope it works for you, because if not, it sounds like it is on it's way out.

"Morning sickness." All my older MOPARS had it. As said, just let it warm up a bit. All will be ok. Sounds like your truck has the disease if all else is ok. Either that, or it is pregnant...

Reverse is a combination of the rear band and front clutch; the front clutch seals in that era have a known issue but that usually causes problems with the 2-3 shift.

If it shifts to 3rd OK the problem is in the rear band/servo; a simple band adjustment might cure the problem...pull the pan and have a look-see.

It doesn't matter if the truck is cold, hot, in between, just started up or have been driving it for hours, reverse will still take for ever to engage, and then u have to rev it lightly to get it to engage. And if I remember correctly, 94 and later dodges have a check valve in one of the cooler lines to prevent the overnight drain back common in the older ones.

If it was a band adjustment issue, wouldn't it slip all the time in reverse and never fully engage? Like I said previously once it grabs reverse it's in, you can torque brake it in reverse on dry pavement and it won't slip, it'll even begin to do a brake stand. There is no issue on the 2nd to 3rd shift, all forward gears work/shift perfectly. I'll start with a band adjustment and see what that does. Could it be a seal in the servo thats pooched? That might explain why I have to rev it to get it to catch, as when you rev it it increases line pressure, right? Any other ideas?

The servo piston seal could be the problem or a band that's way out of adjustment; you won't know until the pan is off.

Just had the exact same problem on my 96 and had to have it rebuilt. Trans guy said the factory had issues with our trans a seal problem ( prolly servo seal as stated above) that affected reverse and 3rd. He said they offer a replacement seal that corrects the problem. Wish I could remember what he called it exactly, but I had to go through mine to fix it.

I've decided to replace the rear band servo piston, I did some research and the piston in the rear band is notorious for breaking, or eating the seals. I've got the valve body off but I'm kind of stumped on how to get the shaft out that the pivot arm for the rear band rotates on. Do I need to take the arm off and if I do, how do you get the shaft out?

I couldn't get the piston out with the apply lever on, I tried 6 ways from Sunday and it wouldn't come out, not saying it can't be done but I couldn't get it.
I agree the proper way to get the apply lever shaft out is to pull the OD unit off. BUT all that is holding the shaft in is a little piece of aluminum casting that sticks down from one of the bolt bosses on the OD unit, blocking the pin from coming out. So...I took a file and a chisel and knocked it off...I was then able to tap the shaft out and get the apply lever off.
The seal on the rear band piston was TRASHED! Half of it was missing and what was there looked like a pack of dogs was chewing on it so I think I found my problem. I used a Superior Transmission Super Servo kit that has a better piston design and seal.
I appreciate the info on the front drum seal but hopefully this will fix the problem.
Now I have the problem of the shaft working it's way out because I filed down that boss on the OD unit, but I'll make a bracket that bolts onto the boss on the OD unit, that has a 90 degree bend that will but up against the shaft. It will work fine because all the load on the shaft is at a 90 degree to the shaft, not axial. I know it's a hack fix but it beats pulling the tranny and getting involved with all the boogeymen that live in the OD housing.
I'll update you guys when I'm done and add pics

Unfortunately I think you'll be going through it again soon...

I can understand why you did what you did, being a 2whl drive taking the od section off is real easy, you wouldn't have had to pull the trans.

So I got the piston in and put the trans all back together and it works perfectly, shifts into reverse with no hesitation and drives great. One suprise was that it fixed a problem I wasn't trying to address - previously when I would manually shift the truck into low, the tranny would free wheel, ie it wouldn't hold the engine, the RPM's would drop to idle and I could free rev the engine, now it doesn't do that, it engine brakes like it should. I also had to make a bracket to hold the apply piston lever shaft (the shaft that the aplly lever rides on) in now that I knocked off the boss off the OD unit that held it in place (read my previous post for more of an explanation).

One tricky thing was the piston was hard to get in because the wear ring that's on Superior Transmission piston kit. It's a split wear ring, so you have to hold the ends together so you can push the piston in the bore (similar to the rings on the pistons in your engine) What I did was hold the wear ring tight around the piston until the ends almost butted together, then put a dab of crazy glue to hold them together, then drove it home.

So if you are experiencing problems with your 46 RE/RH, try and fix it first. This is the second problem that I've fixed where I've been told "Oh it's junk, get a rebuild". The first problem was the shift governor solenoid, that fix was straight forward and took a couple of hours and cured the problem. This fix took about 10 hours in total (I could only work on it for 2 hours at a time, so that probably added some time).

Total cost for both fixes was approx $300, filter and fluid included and I didn't have to yank the tranny.

Thanks to the previous posters for their advise.

Sorry for not having pics, I've got a new iPhone and took alot of pics (or so I thought) but they didn't save unfortunately as I missed a step. I pretty muched covered the sticky points in my previous post but if you have any questions feel free to ask.

One other thing I should add is MAKE SURE YOU CHOCK THE REAR WHEELS before you do this. I know this goes without saying but when you take the valve body out and disconnect the lever from it that goes to the parking prawl, it will likely disengage it, popping your truck out of park like I did. If I didn't have my wheels blocked my truck would've rolled back with me underneath it (I had it up on ramps).

it happen sometime!

Thank-you, WO23Coronet, for following up and giving us a summary of your results. Too often that gets skipped when a problem is resolved.

I'd vote this to go to teh Tech Archive, for whichever Mod does that.

For the other viewers at home, here's a tip toward making your own archive: File -> Save As ->Single File .mht. Give it a filename and save it in a location that's meaningful to you.