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Mine went out in 2007, back then there were not as many options as today. We had Monsterbox, Ford reman, BTS and John Wood. BTS and John Wood were the best options if you planned on keeping your truck for several years. I went with BTS.
Pretty much what Roland said at 200k. I tightened the feed bolts back up and pointed the ol' gal to Lead Hill ArrrKansas. It made it just fine, but there was some major center support wear among other things. Brian said it was on the last toe of its last leg. All stock except for a TS chip with gearhead tunes.
I messed something up around 305000, at 310500 now and getting a BTS on March 20th. It has a edge evolution in it now but installing my DP 6 after the new trans.
With alot thanks to brother Roland I rebuilt & modded my own trans at about 198k. Mine the OD retaining ring came off, the center support was moving all over the place and the stock torque converter was junk due to the t.c. cover splines are weak. It sounded like there was a bag of mables in it when the t.c. wasn't locked up.
So I would say some of the main reasons they fail is center support, pump bushing & seal, OD retaining ring and the weakest link is the torque converter.
Here is a photo of what a t.c. cover looks like when it sounds like it had marbles in it.
My 99 had the marble sound, took it to BTS in Lead Hill, Arkansas. Ask Brian if I should put in new trans. and he said if there were no other problems to run it. And so I am. He installed a new OE converter and the 6.0 cooler and I was out of there in 4 hours.
My point is BTS is a good place to go. You have someone wanting to know if they should spend 5-6k for a trans. and he is honest enough to tell you to run it. That speaks volumes!
I just hit 241,000 on Stay Puft. It was doing fine when I bought the rig at 183,xxx miles. Few thousand later threw on a DP F5, trans still did fine. Recently swapped to Gearhead 6-pos, trans was almost still fine, but started to occasionally slip during 1/2 - 3/4 throttle downshifts on the freeway. Just got the Excursion back from some upgrade/fixes due to bad fuel, tossed in some bigger sticks. Now the trans is definitely on it's way out, I can't run any tunes higher than #4 (Tow/Economy) otherwise even 1/2 throttle will result in hitting 2800rpm in a hurry with no increase in the forward direction.
To be fair to the trans, it has seen heavy towing (12,500-13,000 lbs), temps up to 220 degrees a few times, off-roading, and too many 12-18psi boost launches, the whole time running 35's, stock gears, and the stock 7.3 trans cooler. It lived a fruitful life, and I wasn't expecting it to last on the bigger sticks. Especially with a 38R and T-500 on the way.
I've been eyeballing the HD4R100, a few of my friends on here have them and haven't had any issues (Rich and Razzi). However, Roland sent me the build sheet for the trans he built and I priced everything out, final price with a Precision Industries Stallion billet triple plate converter, cryo'd shafts, Alto Red Eagle clutches, bands, and a few other upgraded hard parts plus a JW V/B came to $2750-ish, minus a few snap rings and such. I get a military discount on the converter, otherwise it'd be another $200. I have a couple of dealer hookups that can get me the HD4R for roundabout $2100, but I'm leaning hard towards overbuilding for a few hundred more for piece of mind. Roland's build was rated at 600 HP, 1200 TQ. Keep in mind, my version of his build uses optional parts, as in better than stock but not insane, in order to stay in budget. For example, each billet shaft (input, intermediate, output) is $800-900 whereas the cryo'd stock shafts are $100/ea or $50/ea with stock exchange. Considering I've seen a large amount of ZF5 and ZF6 speeds running cryo'd shafts at the track making more power than I plan to, I'm comfortable with the choice to run cryo's instead.
Of course the downside to this is not having a simple plug'n'play trans that I just R/R for the stock unit. I plan on picking up a core trans and rebuilding that one. The Excursion is my daily driver, so I can't afford to be out of a vehicle while rebuilding the current unit.
If anyone is interested in the build sheet, let me know via PM and I'll shoot you a copy. Full credit for the list goes to Roland, all I have done is add prices and sources (color-coded to the source).
02-28-2015, 02:11 PM
I rebuilt & modded my own trans at about 198k. Mine the OD retaining ring came off, the center support was moving all over the place and the stock torque converter was junk due to the t.c. cover splines are weak. It sounded like there was a bag of mables in it when the t.c. wasn't locked up. 
