Just off the phone with John who was helpful.

"John I want to throw money at you!" lol. He said no one has called him and stated that before.

1) Line pressure is the major problem. He said if I had a manual valve body we could be set at 150 psi and the transmission would last a good long time. Manual valve body not an option.

2) He is inclined to stay with the 4.2 lever and outlined a few reasons.. considering the major issue is the line pressure then I'm going to stay with 4.2

3) The "retrofit spring setup" not a good setup for me due to the automatic valve body and to a lessor degree the rpm I shift at.


Ordered 6 red grooved clutches, 6 k-steels and teflon sealing rings.

Cope ? Good call, the extra clutch will help, do you have to machine a step in the pressure plate or is there enough room to get the required clearance? Also make sure that the splines on the input shaft are tall enough to grab all 6 clutches. I remember trimming a little off the apply piston in a 47RE to make sure I had enough room to get an extra clutch in. I have 6 clutches in the front drum of the 47RE.

I didn't know that about the retro spring setup , good info

Yes.



Thinner clutches, should be able to pack in an extra with no machining.

Gary

TOLD YA SO!!! but your new 3.8 key chain should be there Friday.

...and this is what the red grooved ones will look like when they've slipped so bad they weld themselves to the steels!

10.65-124 and a quart low on fluid...

Red thin clutches and k-steels showed up yesterday (thanks to John at COPE!), with 6 clutches and steels and a .060 flat snap ring have .086 clearance.

Back in the conversation you asked about cross drilled drums. Here's one I ran in a pretty tricked out 727 in the dark ages. Was mostly done for weight savings as it was milled quite extensively.

Transmission is reassembled and going in today.

Front band with 4.2 lever = 2 turns out from 72 inch pounds per COPE. Was at 2.5 before.

Clearance on 6/6 red clutches and black k-steels .086 with flat .060 snap ring

Line pressure out 6 turns with aftermarket spring, will test pressure once fired up. Line pressure was 105 psi before, looking to set around 130. All check balls in place in valve body. Lock up bleed hole increased to .100

After fighting with a few items this morning like a bent inspection plate and the line on the pressure gauge pissing a quart Type F all over the place the car is back on the road!

Line pressure at the test port is 80 psi at idle, 120 psi with the lever in the WOT position. Not the 130 psi I was aiming for but better. I think after road testing the car a few days to break in the clutches and steels I'll drop the pan and give the set screw a full turn.

Road test-

1-2 shift at WOT will bark the tires, 2-3 is "crisp," 4th gear was about the same and lockup was notably better and distinct. Before you had to sort of pay attention to know lockup was coming in but now its almost like a 5th gear. You can hear the engine change tone as the rpm drops a bit and feel the clutch engage.

I increased the bleed hole in the lockup cover from .075 to .100, Trans-go states you can go out to .125 but on some things I like going in baby steps. I'm not under WOT at lockup so there is no reason to have it hit harder.

Stay tuned...

Nice! you're on the right path it sounds, although I'm not sure the 1-2 being that hard is a good thing.

Fine at light throttle, very normal.

See how it goes with the slicks.

Sigh.

After a long road test now a 2 year old caliper is hanging up, it never ends!

Sorry for the problems you are having. But I have a question how much HP can that transmission handle?

Hitting mine with about 730-740 with no problems.

Depends.

The week link in my setup is the automatic valve body I.M.H.O.

Took apart the caliper, found nothing wrong and was clean inside. Polished the piston with 2000 grit wet/dry just to be safe and reassembled. Changed out both front hoses and flushed the system.

Dropped the trans pan and gave the pressure regulator one full turn. This raised the line pressure to 85/125 psi. So it looks like with the Trans-Go regulator spring in place one turn is good for 5 psi increase. The service manual states with the factory spring, one turn is good for 1-2/3 psi (9kPa) increase. Please verify with a pressure gauge if you are going to tinker around.

My notes are here are for the next guy.. I'm going to hold at 125 psi at WOT and see how it turns out.

Gary

Checking the car over close I found that the kickdown lever was not going back as far as it could with the throttle! There was a 3/8" gap due to the adjuster being all the way out. Rummaging around in my stash 'o parts I found a rod that was an 1" longer and swapped it out.

Much better!

Inspecting on the lift there was some fluid coming out of the bellhousing area, looks like the vent puked a little bit. Fluid level was over 5/16" of an inch over the full mark, DOH!

I'll have to drain some out, I was actually aiming for a touch over the "add" mark.

Aside from that, she's running great! Thinking about tossing in a set of 1.7 ratio roller rockers for a bit more power. =)

Gary

Drained 2 pints out of the trans today and installed the wide band, jetting on the AFB was off a single jet size at WOT!

Right now I'm at 10.6-1/11.2-1 mixture at WOT with the exhaust hooked up and hot weather, should be perfect when it cools off with the headers open.