Any suggestions for performance enhancements/mods to my TH-350 trans such as torque converter stall speed, shift kit, etc... would be greatly appreciated. It is essentially stock at this time.

Thanks, Tom

 

I purchased a B&M shift kit from Summit for about $200 and I also installed a 2000 RPM torquel converter on my TH350. I don't have the car up and running yet (I'm picking up my engine from the builder today!) so I can't tell you how much of a difference it all makes, but I've read a lot of great things about how a shift kit really improves the performance of an automatic transmission. Even without a non-stock converter, I've heard that people have no problem barking the tires between the 1-2 and 2-3 shifts at full throttle with a mostly stock engine. I don't know how much of an exageration this may be....

With a higher than stock stall torque converter, I've read that you will need to add an additional transmission cooler.

Installing a shift kit is something that a patient novice can do. Just make sure you buy a transmission rebuild book (do a search on amazon on "Ron Sessions" and a good TH350 book will come up). The extra pictures and differently worded instructions will help you out a lot. The instructions that came with my B&M shift kit were half-assed at best and you will get confused.

Someone who knows what they are doing could probably do it in a couple of hours, but it took me about a week to do mine. Just make sure that you have a set of feeler gauges and a torque wrench. There are a couple of snap rings that are a complete pain in the *** to remove. But other than that, it is a really straight forward job.

 

Did you do your shift kit why it was in the car or was it out...

 

I did all of my transmission work with the transmission removed from the car. I pulled the transmission when I pulled my engine last august.

Depending on how in depth you want to go when installing your shift kit, I suppose you could do it with the transmission in the car. The B&M shift kit I purchased came complete with new friction materials and pieces (and instructions) to modify the valve/shift body. Off the top of my head, all of the changes the kit does to your transmission to change the shifting characteristics of your transmission are due to modifications made to the valve/shift body. You can remove the valve body from the bottom of the transmission through the transmission oil pan.

Unfortunately there is no way you could change the friction material with the transmission still installed in the car. To replace the friction material, you need to pull the transmission oil pump and remove all of the rotating subassemblies through the front of the transmission.

However, in my opinion, if you are going to install a shift kit you should freshen your friction material to make sure it is up to the task and do the full job. Once your friction material starts to go the more it will slip - leading to more (and faster) deterioration of the friction material.

I would strongly recommend that you take the extra effort to remove your tranmission even though I suppose it would be possible to do a half-assed job with it in the car.

Hope that helps