A tool can made from a guitar string the high E can be very small in diameter .009 and range up from there. By making a loop and fastening the ends to a dowel you can come up with a dandy shoe horn for your piston seals. Its smooth, round and pretty stiff. Works pretty good. Hope this can help out. Thanks Rick
Break-in Just a little disagreement, I think there is some amount of break-in associated with a transmission. It is just not the same as an engine. The clutch plates do have some mating in to do and the bands will as well. This is not a major issue, but, whenever I am starting up a new (expensive??) transmission, I will run it with the rear wheels off the ground. I do this with stands under four corners and run the transmission through all the ranges and at various speeds. Remember to slow the tires with the brakes before reversing. I feel this will alow the clutches to have the proper lubrication and pressure(all the air is purged from the system) prior to the loads of driving a 4000# car down the road. This does not remove the requirement of soaking the clutch plates in ATF. As far as the synthetic oil, I would run the trans until it was hot a couple of times before changing it over. This may uncover some leaks to repair first. Being this is the first trans Joe has done in a long time, it may add some longevity to the rebuild and I recommend it. FWIW: I run synthetic in my race car trans and install it from the start, but, I am relatively certain it is assembled correctly. Good job on the thread, Joe! :TU: Jim
Jim, I agree with your procedure 100% and do it all the time with a rebuit trans. We hadn't gotten to the startup stage yet as Joe is not near that point. In my opinion, it is more of a lubrication point as opposed to a break in. Running it with the wheels off the ground puts most of the stress on the transmission bushings as all the clutches will be engaged once the trans shifts to 3rd. Less moving parts on startup. Running it in neutral without the frictions lubricated will cause heat and wear. So, I do the same as you described. What Joe was referring to was that the forward clutch pack would "wear in" if it was set too tight. I also suggested that he soak the plates in ATF to get them pre-lubed before installation. He would get the speach on startup later on. We are on the same page on this one. Mark PS. Joe, I like to line up the steels in the same direction. Different manufacturers use different indents on the plates.
Today I spent some time familiarizing myself with the parts and the order they go together. There's too much room for error on a project like this, like a missing "O" ring or thrust washer that could cause it not to work or a catastrophic failure in the future. Cleanliness is very important where any transmission goes. I have all the parts including the case perfectly clean......I even went as far as painting the case! At least if it don't work it'll look good :laugh: I determined the best approach to re-assembling this thing is to be organized, and assemble the major assemblies first such as the clutches, oil pump, and valve body. That way the assembly of the complete transmission will go smoothly and much faster. I assembled the clutch pistons and seals yesterday, I hope that was the hardest part b/c it sure was a PITA. Unfortunately, I was so involved in getting them to go together that I didn't take any photos trying to get the seals to go in without tearing them. Therefore, my first photo for tonight is the clutch housings with the pistons and pressure springs already installed, minus the friction plates and steels. The plates are soaking in fluid as I post this and tomorrow I plan on installing them. The top one is the center support which houses the intermediate piston. On the left is the forward clutch, and the direct clutch is on the right. The most important thing here is not to mix up the parts.......the direct clutch uses the piston with the check ball in it, (the forward clutch piston has a blind hole and no check ball). Also, the forward clutch uses the green springs and the direct clutch uses the plain springs. (They are interchangable so it's easy to mix these up and I'll bet it wouldn't go into gear like that.) uzzled:
The valve body has been bead blasted and cleaned. I went so far as to de-burr the valves by hand with scotchbrite before installing them to ensure they don't stick in their bores. Everything was thoroughly cleaned in solvent and then rinsed with hot water then blown dry with compressed air before assembly. I would think cleanliness is most important on this part. I will note that I left the spring out of the accumulator......that will make a firmer 2-3 shift. (Really, it was b/c I don't think I could get that sucker back in there without breaking something!) LOL If you ever take one apart you'll see what I mean. ou: I also added a spring to the VB side of the 1-2 accumulator valve to make a firmer 1-2 shift.......originally there was no spring there. Mark, thanks for that :TU: tip!
Assembling the front pump.........the seal was tough to get out. I had to collapse it first with a small chisel. The factory really sealed it in there well with goop. When I installed the new one, I made sure to smear some sealer around the edge of the seal bore like the factory did. It would really suck to have a leak here after it's all back in the car. Also, the book says the bushing should be flush to the surface to .010" below.......this one was sticking out a small bit so I pressed it back in just a little before installing the seal.
Next, before putting the 2 halves together, you must install the oil pump gears and pack them well with petroleum jelly. Here's one place where I screwed up when I took this thing apart........I forgot to mark the gears so i could put them back in the same way they came out. ou: No biggie I guess, but I'll know the next time. For some reason the factory didn't mark these parts.
When I assembled the 2 halves, I used 2 huge hose clamps connected together to align them. I also slid a drill bit through one hole to get them lined up between the 2 halves. After the 5 housing bolts were torqued to 18 ft.lbs., I removed the clamp.
I should point out that the pressure valves and stator valve need to go in first before you can put the 2 halves together. I used an higher pressure yellow pump spring to boost the mainline pressure. Here's a photo of the valve parts that go into the pump: (please note, the stator valve is the top one and it goes into the pump body first and then the spring........also, those 2 horshoe spacers on the bottom of the picture were used with the stock spring and I left them out intentionally so as not to make too much pressure)
Here's a photo of how the stator valve goes in......if you put it in backwards my guess is that the SP function would not work and the converter would be permanently stuck in low stall:
Joe, Looks like you have things very organized. :TU: The flat spring is part of the stator setup. Not sure exactly what it does, but is fine where you have it. The pump gears should have stayed aligned, though you should be ok. Sometimes there are little indents on the gears so you can line them up somewhat like on a timing gear setup. Follow the chassis manual, the inner gear should have the tangs up. This allows proper installation of the torque converter. The pic looks like you have them correct. As to the pump spring, if you find you need more pressure, you can put the shims in later as the pressure regulator valve can be accessed from inside the pan. With the clutches assembled, you can now begin putting the main gearset together. Follow the manual again. However, it may show using a special tool to put the whole main section together and dropping it in at once. Here are some tips instead. Make sure you have all the needle bearings in place and aligned correctly. Get the primary planetary setup together and make sure you have the plastic thrust washer in place (easy to forget). Make sure the plastic split gear ring is on too. The sun gear needs to be installed with the chamfer down. Then install the reaction carrier. This is where I would stop. Next install the band into the case. It is kinda tricky, but goes in so that it rests on the two metal anchors. You can use a screwdriver through the servo hole to seat it. Then lube the rear bushing and put in the 3 prong spacer. Make sure the thrust washer is held in place on the output shaft with some pet. jelly. Hold the gear assembly by the mainshaft and install it in the case. Make sure it is in properly before continuing. Put the sun gear shaft in and then the needle bearing for the center support. Make sure the plastic washer in the support is held in place with some pet. jelly too. Align the support so that the bolt hole is lined up with its hole in the case and carefully put in on the main assembly and over the sun gear shaft. The reaction carrier has a roller clutch in it that runs on the support. Rotate the mainshaft AND sun gear shaft together clockwise. The support will drop into place and needs to be completely down so that the retainer ring will go in. The reason the manual shows the main assembly going in as a complete piece is that early TH400's used a sprag instead of the roller clutch. There is no easy way to get the sprag on the center support while in the case, so the special tool was used to drop the whole thing in when assembled on the bench. I have used that tool and found (in my experience) that it was not strong enough to hold all the weight. Many times, it came loose. Once you are certain that all is correct, you can follow the directions and put in the retainers as instructed. The support retainer is flat on one side and it goes in flat side towards the support with the openning towards the front band anchor. The inter. clutch pack retainer is NOT beveled and its openning faces opposite the band anchor. One last thing for now. After you put in the intermediate clutch pack and front band, put in the direct drum BEFORE installing its clutch pack. It will be easier to hold by the spring retainer. Work it back and forth until it is aligned with the intermediate clutches. You will know when it is right as it will make a solid "thud" and you won't see any of the drum splines above the sun gear shaft. I can go into more tomorrow and answer any questions you have. Am pretty sure I didn't miss anything (someone will catch me if I did ou: ) Mark
That's wierd........ in the manual it shows a sprag, but the trans actually has a roller clutch in it. They show an illustration of having to hold the sprag together with a rubber band in order to put it together uzzled: .....looks like a PITA......I'm glad I have the roller clutch instead. I left that thing together........I don't think it's much fun putting all those rollers back in.
The rollers are a pain, but NOTHING compared to the sprag. It looks like 66 was a change year on a few things as some have the sprag and some the roller. For what it is worth, the sprag is viewed as better since it has more elements. It may have been over designed and the roller was a more economical (and easier) choice. Later direct drums (most 71+) have the roller in place of the sprag, but that is another discussion. Good luck with things going together, I will be online later (can't always post at work ). Mark
That is called a converter out check valve. It is in the passage that goes to the trans cooler. Basically what it does is keeps oil going to the cooler from backing up into the stator in the converter and forcing you back to low stall. As oil is forced out of the stator piston, as in going to high stall, it ends up going to the cooler out passage of the pump, this littel spring is forced open as the stator piston empties itself, then closes back up once the piston has reached the high stall position. Whn litlle bits of debri get behind that littel spring, it can cause you to not have high stall, or as much high stall, especially at idle and low rpm. Jim Burek
Well, she's all back together! Not in the car yet, but none the less the pile of parts is again one piece. I took photo's as I went along and will try to explain the process as simply as I can. What a learning experience this has been.......if I have to do it all over again, it will be much easier the next time. I lubed everything well with petroleum jelly upon assembly. The nice part about that is it holds the parts together so they don't fall out during assembly. It's hard to see, but the first thing to go in is the selective washer that fits in all the way at the end of the tranny case. I put in the low/reverse band after that:
This next part is the internal gear, which has bearings on both sides of it. if you look closely you can see the bearing on the end. It would be very easy to leave this out and that would be disastrous: (I wish I knew how to post multiple pictures at a time, but I don't so I have to post these one at a time)
There's 3 sets of neelle bearings that go into the gear assembly. Here's a photo of one of them, it's like the one in the photo above that's put together:
The next piece to go together is this tailshaft. In the photo you can see the bronze spacer bearing, another part that would be easy to forget. It rides onto that "selective washer" that I previously installed. But before putting this in, it must first be assembled to the internal gear which I will post a photo of next: (I should note here.....this part holds together with a snap ring that's beveled on one side........that side faces out)
this is actually the other side of the part in the above photo......notice the needle bearing that must be installed:
