If you spend time talking with F150 owners like we do here at Ford-Trucks.com and you’ll know the factory automatic transmission leaves a lot to be desired. The shifts aren’t crisp, are prone to slip under heavy throttle shifts and transmission life isn’t always optimal. A common phrase heard among F150 owners is the transmission shifts like granny’s car. If you add a large amount of power the transmission shift is even worse and lifespan takes a significant hit.
Many people turn to programmers and chips to provide better shifts. Others turn to aftermarket shift valves. These solutions, while often resulting in shifts which are better than stock, are merely Band-Aids which try to make the best of inadequate hardware. For some folks this is “good enough.” Others want or need more than these simple solutions can provide – or they simply want the peace of mind knowing their transmission is going to last a long time.
Level 10 Performance Transmissions in Hamburg, New Jersey, has gained a reputation of building solid transmissions for stock and performance “enhanced” Ford gas and diesel trucks. Pat Barrett, the man behind Level 10, is a Ford transmission expert whose work has been featured in many magazines over the years. I was given the opportunity to see him work his magic first hand on the Roush F-150 project truck and I can say without a doubt it was worth the road-trip from Atlanta to Hamburg. The goal of this article is not to teach you how to rebuild a transmission. There are books out there which detail tranny rebuilding. Rather, this article is meant to be a brief overview of the process.
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| Not only does Pat keep a spotlessly clean shop, he also provides transmission services for many types of vehicles. |
The Roush F-150 project truck featured in many articles on Ford-Trucks.com is a 2006 F-150 FX4 Supercrew – a very heavy F-150 especially with 20 inch Roush wheels. At 10,000 miles the stock 5.4L V8 was upgraded with an intercooled Roush supercharger, raising horsepower from 207 RWHP to about 375 RWHP after some dyno time at Troyer Performance. Even with Roush’s tune in the PCM, and some firmness added after dyno sessions, this power level was just too much for the stock 4R75E transmission (note that the 4R75E shares many characteristics with the 4R70E used in earlier F-150s and 4R70W and 4R75W used in other Ford applications). Within 6,000 miles the clutches were slipping badly during the 2-3 upshift and 4-2 downshift under heavy throttle. It was bad enough that the entire cowl would shudder when the transmission was hot.
Upon arriving at Level 10 Charlie “Captchas”, long-time friend of FTE, plugged in a diagnostics tool and began checking out anything the truck’s computer stores about the transmissions operation. We were informed that the tranny was slipping when it was cold on the way to the shop (which I already knew). Often times a quick check with a diagnostic tool (not a simple code reader) can reveal much about the condition of the transmission.
Next, the road test. Pat took the truck for a drive to determine how it downshifted and upshifted, both at
part and wide open throttle. Pat’s remarks about the truck were “oh yeah, needs work.” That was a nice
was of putting it - the transmission in bad shape. Pat decided to rebuild the entire transmission with the ability to handle gobs of power over the long haul.
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| Pat takes the truck for a test drive. He doesn’t look happy… lots of clunks and slippage during shifts. | Rick removed the cross member, drive-shafts, skid plate and transfer case. |
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| The transmission is removed. | Here is the transmission with the torque converter removed. Note the burnt color of the transmission fluid – this transmission has less than 16,0000 miles on it. |
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| The stock torque converter. Note the darkened bluish tint to the metal in the foreground and discoloration on various points around the circumference. This is due to overheating of the fluid. | Pat begins disassembly of the transmission. |
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| Once the transmission pan was removed we started getting a good indication of the condition of the transmission. This is the pan magnet and all the gunk it has managed to capture. | Removal of the valve body, valves and various related components begins. |
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| With the valve body removed the check balls and valves can be removed. The check balls are inspected for wear (no wear) and in this case they will be replaced with higher quality parts. | |
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| Here Pat is disassembling the 3-4 accumulator… | …followed by the 2-3 accumulator. |
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| Next is removal of the low-reverse servo parts. | And then removal of the overdrive servo parts. |
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| The front pump bolts are removed in order to gain access to the input shaft, clutches, bands, drums and the rest of the guts of the transmission. | Here are the stock clutch friction and steel plates. There was virtually no clutch friction material left. |
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| The over-drive band is removed. | The clutch drum is disassembled. |
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| The remainder of the interior parts are removed, including the planetary carrier and gears. | The individual parts are then cleaned by hand before going through the automated washer. In the meantime Pat’s guys are connecting the transmission cooling lines to a reciprocating pressure flushing machine – I missed the opportunity to photograph this process. |
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| The valve body components are removed and inspected. | Here are the accumulator filter screens. Note the clutch and friction plate particles collected on them. |
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| Here is the stator support removed. This is inspected for nicks, burrs and scoring. | Pat points out various passages which will be modified to provide better fluid flow. |
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| Each spot is marked….. | …and drilled to the appropriate size. |
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| All existing gaskets are replaced. | The valve body is reassembled with new check balls and higher flow rate valves, along with changes to the valve springs. |
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| The pump body…. | ….is inspected. New bushings and seals are installed. |
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| The pump is assembled. | Then the stator… |
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| The hub and output-shaft is assembled after inspection. New, upgraded seals and new snap-rings are used. | The output shaft is lubed. |
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| | Direct drum is inreinstalled. |
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| | New high-performance bands are used. |
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| Note that throughout the inspection disassembly and reassembly OEM snap rings were replaced with high performance rings which look more like a small stack slinky spring. They provide better service life and a better seal compared to OEM rings. | The front pump is installed. |
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| The servos are reassembled… | …with upgraded pistons, sleeves… |
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| And the valve body… | …is installed. |
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| Here’s the new transmission filter. | The filter is reattached to the valve boby. |
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| Here is the new pan and the new clutches. Level 10 has these pans made specifically for this application. While there are similar aftermarket pans available, they do not allow the use of stock gaskets – this one does. The pan provides added fluid capacity as well as more cooling surface area. The additional fluid helps the transmission run cooler and cool-down from WOT runs faster. | A larger locking torque converter with a 10.5 disc is added. This will help the transmission hold up to the additional power and will prevent slippage during lockup under heavy throttle. The heart of any good transmission rebuild depends on the converter. Many people will opt for higher than stock stall speeds to help ¼ times. Because this truck is a daily driver and economy is a concern Pat choose a converter with similar to stock stall characteristics. (that’s my Pepsi in the background!) |
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| The Level 10 transmission pan is installed. | Pat adds his signature touch…literally. |
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| Here she is with torque converter installed, ready to go back in the truck. Note – the converter has fluid added to it before it is placed in the transmission. | Up and up and away… |
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| Lining up a heavy transmission isn’t always an easy job. A help set of hands helps. | Now the transmission is in. Next comes the transfer case, cross-member and drive shafts. |
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| The transfer case is reattached. | The front drive shaft is installed. |
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| The cross-member is installed. | The skid-plate is installed. |
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| The rear drive-shaft is installed. | Transmission fluid is added and the engine is started. |
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| Fluid levels are checked after warm-up and topped-off as needed. We’re running full synthetic Mercon V. | Pat takes the truck for a final road test. Note the smile on his face this time. This truck can really lay down the rubber now! |
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The transmission performance after this rebuild was light-years ahead of stock. Due to the larger disc in the torque converter custom tuning changes were required to prevent hard clamp-on/clamp-off of the torque converter lockup. Shifting was smoother and firmer than stock without any slippage. The torque converter is wonderful and power is great without having to rev it up much higher than stock in order to really bring on monstrous torque. As a matter of fact while pulling away from the toll booth on the New Jersey expressway the truck accidently layed down about 10 feet of rubber --- simply trying to pull away faster than normal due to my lane merging. The guy at the booth gave me one heck of a strange look (and it wasn’t a nice look)!
Level 10 spec builds all transmissions – because each customer has different equipment such as blowers, superchargers, turbos, gear ratio, etc. which can impact the needs of the build. Tuning, chips and programmers also come into play. As a result of these factors Level 10 critiques each component to the exact customer needs to achieve the best results. The clutches, steels, bands and planetaries were all replaced with parts Level 10 had made specifically for them (for instance, they have and R&D relationship with Raybestos). Super Blue High Performance clutches w/Kolene steels were used. PTS Billet Torque converter for super launches and long life. Super Blue High Performance Clutches w/Kolene Steels. Everywhere new PTS seals, gaskets, washers, bushings and rings were used.
The truck can now lay down rubber in 1 st without any shudder, and gives a WOT 1-2 shift a really nice chirp. Pat’s built many performance transmissions for Fords and other applications. Level 10 was contracted by the royal family in Jordan to modify all transmissions of the Royal Guard (mostly Ford products). These vehicles operate in extreme conditions and need to be upgraded and enhanced to insure a long service life. Pat also modified the royal family’s please vehicles as well. Ford Motor Company in conjunction with Bin Sulayem (sort of like the Middle East’s “King Ranch”) produced a twin-turbo charged 5.4 L “Bin Sulayem Expedition” --- Level 10 was also contracted to develop the transmissions for these vehicles which were sold to the Middle East/African market through the Ford dealer network.
He provides a custom setup which includes a built transmission and dual turbos for the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia --- that’s an indication of how widespread his reputation is. A word of advice with the transmissions used in these trucks… when cruising in 4 th (over-drive) if you open up the throttle the resulting down-shift skips 3 rd gear and drops to 2 nd . The resulting change in RPMs is extremely hard on the overdrive band and its no wonder its one of the first things to go in a Ford transmissions if you gun it a lot at highway speeds. To insure long service life hit the over-drive button before hard acceleration in order to drop it down to 3 rd . This will make the passing kickdown from 3 to 2 instead of 4-2.
My experience with Pat and his crew left me with a sense of “this is how a shop ought to run.” Nice folks who pay attention to detail, run a clean shop, have fun and most importantly, really know what they are doing. We had some minor issues with the transmission tuning after the installation (due to SCT not having proper torque ft/lb per second tables located for the PCE1 code contained in our PCM. Pat went out of his way to make sure everything was taken care of, working perfectly and transmission is better than the first day I took delivery of the truck from the dealership. Without reservation I can recommend Pat and his crew at Level 10 and I plan to give them a call next time I need a transmission built (I have a Powerstroke project in mind).
For more information about Level 10 be sure to visit their web site at http://www.levelten.com/ .
Check out their various kits. Or if you prefer to have your transmission professionally rebuilt you can stop by their shop or they can make arrangements to have your transmission shipped to them (removed and installed by either you or a local shop).
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7-30-2004
7-30-2004