So I took my c6 a4 vette to a shop for a 3600 stall swap, rear main seal redone, and tune. The shop owner said my trans temps hit 270* on the dyno and said he felt the transmission pan and it wasn’t hot at all, the lines weren’t clogged, but said he thinks my stock trans cooler isn’t doing its job or it’s just a bad sensor reading.

he gives me the green light to pick up the next day and I show up to pay for everything and take it home. Not even halfway home I see trans temps hit 266*+ and so I call and text the shop owner I think he needs to tow it back to the shop . Then my transmission starts to smoke & DIC says “ Transmission hot idle engine”. I pull over and turn the car off while I wait for the shop owner to pick it up. When he shows up, I turn the car on and drive it up the trailer just fine. Afterwards, I asked him to order a Derale trans cooler. For the entire month of June he ghosts me. I see on my Snapchat that my vette is still strapped onto the trailer and he texts me saying they dropped the pan and that my trans fluid and filter were burned and my trans will need a rebuild.

After trying to piece the event from start to finish I asked him “when did you do that if my vette was still on the trailer?” He replied “We dropped the pan when we did the 3600 converter install, that’s when we saw the trans fluid and filter being burned. I wasn’t referring to the point of time when I picked up your car for free”.


i then asked “If that’s true, why didn’t you show me proof or tell me right then and there? Furthermore, why continue with a converter swap if you knew the transmission was bad? None of that makes sense, especially since before my original converter gave out, I had the transmission fluid and filter serviced months before I brought my vette to your shop”

He just keeps saying my transmission is old/bad and was the cause for the overheating and that “a stock transmission and stock cooler shouldn’t be overheating with a 3600 stall”


Im 99% positive an external trans cooler is needed for high stall converters and I’m sure he’s either lying about my transmission being bad to milk money or he damaged it and trying to wash his hands. My buddy told me when he took his vette to the same shop, the owner blew up his engine, but pinned the blame on Pat G.


Can anyone give their opinion on the situation? I planned to upgrade to a built trans later on in the year, so I think he did me wrong and trying to get me to pay for a rebuild on a stock trans.

 

Why didn’t you do the cooler install with the converter. That’s common sense. Car could be driven easily without a cooler ( when converter locks it isn’t a problem at all). But a dyno session would be hard on fluid temp

 

I asked him if an external cooler would be needed and he said “We can add it if it’s needed. I drove it around for a bit and everything was fine”

 

Ive been a GM AT trans guy for over 30 years.

I would take it to a real transmission shop and have them look it over.

Several things don’t make sense here.

I often use an infrared gun (cheap one too) on trans pans and they will read very close to the sensor reading. I would have asked for pics of the filter and pan debris also.

 

Exactly. It made no sense to me why he would touch the pan instead of using an infrared gun. And every time I mention why he never sent pics or videos of it when they were doing the 3600 stall swap, he never answers it. Yesterday he told me “I have a transmission guy who can come look at it because 1st, 2nd and reverse work. But drive and 3rd are gone”. That’s when I reminded him that I don’t want him or anyone he knows touching my vette anymore and I’ll be picking it up this week

 

If he felt the pan, and it didn't feel hot at all, how can he say the cooler isn't working????

 

IF he dropped the pan while doing the converter swap, and found bad things, the intelligent (meaning just 1 IQ point above moron level...) thing would have been to tell you right then.
As a shop owner, the last thing on earth I ever wanted was any possible "Look what you did to my car" situation.
Enough random bad things happen in the shop anyway. It's far too easy to avoid the obvious ones...

SG4247 is right. Things don't add up. Take his advice, and take it to a real transmission shop.

 

I got it to my buddy’s shop. They serviced the trans fluid and filter. There’s bits of fine metal flakes. They put it back together and the car is stalling out every 5 feet in Drive. I asked them to give it a try in gears 1,2,3 if they work

 

Im going by Monday to test drive. My buddy said on highway speeds it’s great but city speed it slips, which I told him will be normal since it’s a 3600 stall. But he mentioned the transmission overheated even with the heavy duty trans cooler from autozone. He said I could come by today but I know his shop closes at 6 (15 mins left) and he’ll have family events this weekend so I told him I’ll just swing by Monday. I want to see if it’ll drive in all gears (Drive,1,2,3) fine and monitor the trans temps, hoping they don’t exceed 180ish. I’m in Corpus Christi, so it’s been 98-105 lately

 

If you are running the cooler in series with the factory cooler in the radiator, you can run the fluid ONLY through the aftermarket cooler it should run about 20 degrees cooler.

 

i asked him if he by passed the radiator, but the only things he said was “It already had a Trans cooler so we used the same lines after we flush it”. Not sure entirely what to make of that since it didnt really answer my question, but I know his shop gets busy so that’s why I’ll go check it out

 

External cooler from autozone installed, lines have been flushed, radiator & condenser both cleaned of debris and the only code that shows up is for o2 sensors. But he said transmission temps were still getting hot. I may have to check for any hose kinks, fluid pressure to trans, if there’s enough coolant flowing through, and if the radiator fan (single fan) isn’t acting up

 

Update

After my buddy serviced my transmission and filter, he showed me a video with metal shavings in the pan and now it won’t go above 15mph, no matter what gear it’s in. Safe to say, I’ll be taking Orlando from Cantu Racing to court. Because every time I asked him to explain why he continued with the converter swap if he thought it was bad (which it wasn’t) and his response was “it’s not my problem anymore”. He then added a sign in his shop that says “Not Responsible For Accidents”. What a clown

 

Couple things, im going to assume you have a cooler from autozone its not adequate as they usually only sell plate/fin styles. The biggest killers of 4l60e's aside from the weak input sprags is heat. A good stack plate cooler like a derale is a must on a stock trans with an aftermarket stall and it needs to be placed in direct air flow or have a high volume fan pulling air through it. Also I'm going to go out on a limb and say your trans was probably hurt prior to the stall, the stall just brought it to light and made it worse. When you get on the throttle cruising do you let it downshift itself out of overdrive or do you pull back to third? Pretty typical symptoms for fried clutch packs and or a broken front sprag. In regards to dropping the pan and being able to determine damage... not likely other than you'd see burnt fluid and clutch material...but thats honestly pretty common on any 4l60e with mileage.

Your transmission is 100% cooked... I'd probably not waste your money on a lawyer, ittl get hung up in court forever and you likely wont get anything out of it other than a bill to the lawyer. Take that money and call the folks at RPM Transmission and buy a level 6 or 7 4l60e and make sure you talk to them about adequate coolers and the proper way to drive these transmissions to not cause damage. I'm not saying your shop was entirely in the right either, it sounds like they jerked you around a bit, however I doubt you have grounds for a law suit. I wouldn't waste your time with local trans rebuilders either just so we're clear. the 4l60e is proper garbage and theres only a few folks in the game that know how to make them live. RPM, Performabuilt... and maybe Level 10 (i dunno if they mess with vettes or not) Stay far and clear of Monster Transmissions no matter what you read.