If only the sun shell is bad you should have first and third. That doesn't mean it's okay to drive it around, unless you want to pollute the entire transmission with metal filings.

 

Believe me, I'm not wanting to drive it aroun while it has a bum transmission, but I'm curious why I can't get anything in 1st or 3rd. Like I said before, you can feel it engaging but it won't move in any gear.

 

I'm not a professional, so there are lots of things I don't know about. It's possible you broke the output shaft, or one of the planetarys. Did it make any nasty noises?

No fluid pressure or out of fluid will do it, but you say it seems to engage.

There are other more obscure things liked cracked pistons that can cause weird things. We could speculate forever. The thing to do is get at it and tear it down.

 

I agree, but time is limited right now. I had the transmission guy I work with look at it briefly and he was as shocked as me that it was engaging with no movement. There were no nast noises that occured it was as simple as it was there one moment and gone the next.

 

Well, I think I found the culprit... I pulled the pan this afternoon to get an idea of how bad the rebuild was going to be (i.e. clutches + servos + seals or hard parts plus the rest just mentioned). The fluid looked horrible for being a fresh rebuild (less than 10k) and reminded me of rusty/muddy oil. I knew the fluid was burnt going in, but its appearance on the dipstick was not near as bad as what it looks like in the pan.

The good part is that the tranny looks like it's a breeze to pull out with the vehicle on a lift. Looks as simple as pulling the exhaust, dip stick, connectors, cooler lines, and shifter linkage and it is out which is a whole lot easier than I was expecting.

At this point I'm assuming it was a torque converter failure since the company who built the transmission for the previous owner has an excellent reputation for quality on their performance builds and I found out it was a bench build that the previous owner installed himself. The fact that I completely lost the pressure to fully engage in any gear obviously denotes a pump or converter failure especially considering the absense of metallic debris.

I'm still irritated, but ready to get my baby back on the road. Any extras I should do while I have the transmission out? And besides the sites mentioned previously in this thread are there any others I should go to for tranny parts?

Thanks again for all your help guys and I'll make sure to get some detailed pics for future aid to others going through this like myself.

 

Thank you for taking the pictures and sharing your knowledge. My 93 requires the same procedure. Maybe next month.....