My E40D transmission was rebuilt. A few weeks later, the transmission quit. It would not engage in ANY gear.

When the Ford dealer removed the tranny, they found that the Torque Converter was backed off so that only about 1/8" was engaged on the spline gear shaft.

How do you figure that the Torque Converter backed off the spline gear? What would cause this to happen?

 

That sounds bogus to me. The flywheel and crankshaft holds the torque converter in place in the front of the transmission. For it to "back off the shaft" would require there to be some kind of gap between the flywheel and crankshaft. There isn't any. The converter has a pilot that fits into the end of the crankshaft to locate it.

If the dealer really thinks this is what happened then they may have pulled it partically out of the front of the transmission when they removed it from the truck. I think your dealer doesn't know what he's talking about.

My guess is the converter stripped the input shaft or broke the pump gears. Either would mean there would be no engagement.

 

Yeah that would be weird.

The only ways there might be a gap is if someone put the wrong TC on, left a gap between the engine and bell housing, striped the splines or smashed the pump drive inside the tranny when they installed the TC.

Or when they removed the tranny the TC slipped a little off the shaft, but then that WOULD have to be a really STOOPID mechanic to think that was the way it was before disassembly. That would be like saying your tires weren't making full contact with the wheel hub, after you removed all the lug nuts.

I would jump on whoever installed the rebuilt and the rebuilder. A rebuilt should not fail in a few weeks. If it failed it was due to bad assembly or bad installation.

Good Luck,

Jim Henderson

 

Could have been the wrong tranny, wrong input shaft, too short.

 

I watched the mechanic remove my tranny. When he tried to remove the torque converter which should have just slipped off of the spline shaft, it would NOT come off. Two guys had to work together to PRY the converter off.

What do you make of that?

 

If the converter was stuck in the front of the transmission it almost surely has welded the converter hub to the pump bushing. If you can, take a close look at the neck of the converter. I will bet you find it badly galled.

Is the truck at the shop that overhauled the transmission? Whoever has it now sounds like a they are waaaaaay out of their area of expertise.

Steve

 

The tranny shop that rebuilt my transmission, refused to honor their warranty. I was forced then, to have a Ford dealer put in a remanufactured Ford tranny.

What I am trying to do now, is just figure out what happened? I suspect that the shop that rebuilt my tranny, did something weird.

What could that something be?

There was galling in the bushing. But only in about 1/8" of that bushing. What does that mean?

 

Why are they refusing to honor the warranty?

 

If the pump driven gear is install backwards, or not aligned, and the mechanic didn't notice it, the converter would be held out some (well, quite a lot in my opinion) and the pump gear would bind on the converter jamming it together requiring it to be pried off.
Or if something jammed in the gear (trash in the trans).
This sounds like assembly or repair error and you should raise hell about the warranty, legaly in small claims court ($5000 limit) if necessary!
If they rebuilt it and installed it, and all you did was drive it properly, they should honor the warranty.

 

I am here, to find out why (and if), a torque converter is only engaged 1/8" on the shaft, and the bushing is scored up--what that meant.

Would everybody agree now, that:

1. It is possible for my torque converter to be only partly engaged on the shaft?

2. That this lack of engagement is a bad assembly issue?

3. When the tranny was under pressure from my being stuck in the gravel, that this partly engaged Torque Converter just let go?

Is this what happened?

 

[Would everybody agree now, that:

1. It is possible for my torque converter to be only partly engaged on the shaft?

2. That this lack of engagement is a bad assembly issue?

3. When the tranny was under pressure from my being stuck in the gravel, that this partly engaged Torque Converter just let go?

Is this what happened? [/B][/QUOTE]


#1) No. If the converter was not properly installed the transmission wouldn't have worked but for a few minutes, if at all, before destroying something. It is possible that the converter was not properly installed in the front of the transmission and the tech that installed the transmission in the truck used the bell bolts to pull the trans up to the block. But there would be so much pressure on the converter and pump that it would break something very quickly. I doubt you would have gotten it home that way. If the transmission worked normally for any length of time I doubt this is what happened.

#2) If #1 is accurate (and I doubt it is) then it is indeed an assembly problem.

#3) Dendends on what happened when you got stuck in the gravel. We get lots of trucks in my shop that have ruined their transmissions from getting stuck (gravel or whatever) and trying stuff like rocking it out with the transmission. Its possible to overheat a transmission doing this. What happened and how long did you try getting it out?

Why did the original shop refuse to warranty the transmission?

Typically, "Dealers" don't know much about transmissions because they don't have a transmission rebuilder. Instead they only install "remans". Therefore they cannot accurately diagnose what happened to yours. If the neck of the converter is galled right at the end then I would bet that the pump siezed and the neck of the converter spun inside it. This would destroy the pump gears and the truck would quit pulling instantly. This sounds like the tranny got very hot.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, I own a transmission shop.

Steve

 

Hi Steve:

I told them that I rocked my RV in order to get out of gravel. However, my Ford manual advises rocking to get out of stuck places. Also, I did not rock for more than 10 seconds before stopping the engine. I tried this 10 second rock 3x in about 15 minutes, and the 3rd time, the tranny quit.

Question: Steve, if what you wrote above, actually occurred to me, would you have honored my warranty in your shop?

Thanks,
George

 

George,

This is purely speculation but.... If you only rocked the truck 3 times in 15 minutes then I suspect that there was already a problem and the rocking put enough stress on it to force an immediate failure.

Would I have covered it under warranty? I can't say at this point. Since January of 2000 I have only refused two warranty repairs, both for water in the transmissions and both because the owner tried to hide the problem. In both cases I offered a repair at a discounted price. In your case, if you were a good customer and I thought that indeed the transmission shouldn't have failed, I might. Alot will depend on how long ago we built it and how many miles you put on it.

I should note that I am very warranty concience. I am very liberal about covering repairs under warranty. Even customers that are out of warranty, if the time and milage are not waaay out there I might cover it anyway. This is simply good business. My shop is a high end shop and we do quality work. I want my customers to think they got their money's worth and will tell their friends and co-workers that they had a good experience at my business.

If you had the unit built at the shop that quoted you the cheapest price, then you shouldn't be surprised that they refused to warranty the transmission. I see it every day, people come in my shop and tell me that one of the "shade tree" guys quoted them $500 under my price. Then they are back in 6 to 12 months with the trans fried again and the "shade tree guy" won't warranty the job, or they only got a 6 month warranty to begin with.

If you go to a reputable shop and pay a reasonable price you will probably get better service from the transmission they build for you and from the shop when warranty service is required.

Steve

 

Hi Steve:

I paid $3250 to have my E40D rebuilt. I had no problems with my tranny, I just brought it into Relaible Transmission of Hillsboro, Oregon to have the oil changed.

Reliable told me that they had to drop the pan in order to change the oil properly. I did not know anything about trannys then, and Oked the work. They dropped the pan, and the manager shows me the oily muck in the bottom. I reached in and touched this muck myself. It was like touching oily sand. There were no pieces of metal or parts in that muck.

The manager tells me that I am going to have my tranny fail out somewhere where there is no tranny shop, and it is going to cost a fortune to have it towed in. He says that I am here now, and that it is my decision. I did not shop the rebuilding around, and that was my stupid mistake !! But everything happened like in slow motion, and was done so smoothly.

Foolish and naive person that I am, I trusted him. When the tranny was disassembled, they called me in back and showed me some parts that were very thin, with teeth in the inside diameter, and what looked to be abrasive material on the sides. Some of the teeth were missing. They told me that this showed that my tranny was just about to fail. I believed them. It never occurred to me then, that they may have just put those parts there and told me that they were part of my tranny.

When the rebuilt tranny was installed, I went out on a test drive with the shop owner. I couldn't hear one bit of difference from the shifting than when I first brought my tranny in for an oil change. But the shop owner told me that it sounded really good to him. He was very convincing, and I believed him.

Only SIX weeks later, I got stuck on the Eel River gravel bar in Northern California. That is where my tranny failed. I phoned Reliable Transmission with my cell phone from that very spot. The manager told me that it did NOT sound like a warranty issue to him!!

I had my RV towed to the nearest Ford dealer. That tow cost me $400. The following morning I phoned Reliable and asked for the name of the nearest associate shop. Reliable refused to give me the name of an associate shop. Although up front, before my tranny was rebuilt, they said that they had associate shops (ATSG) all over the U.S.A. that would cover their warranty if I had a failure outside of their area, now they told me that there were none. At that point I was alarmed at the manager's attitude. I asked, there are no associate shops in all of Northern California? He said that there were none.

I knew then that they were not backing me in any warranty claim. I had a choice then, of having my tranny rebuilt again, or buying a remanufactured tranny. If Ford would open up my tranny to find what was wrong, it might have cost me a lot more money than if I just bought a remanufactured tranny, which would carry a 3-year warranty at any Ford dealer. So I went for the remanufactured tranny which cost me $400 less than the rebuilt from Reliable. So, in order to get my tranny, which may have been OK in the first place, I paid $6,003 plus the $400 towing !!

When I complained to the Oregon Attorney General about Reliable's failure to honor their warranty. Reliable responded with not even mentioning their claimed warranty issue. No, they said that I was impatient, would not listen, and the next thing that they knew I had contacted a Ford dealer and had a remanufactured tranny installed. Reliable wrote, that as a result, nobody would ever know what went wrong with my tranny.
They said that I would not follow their simple few simple procedures which were previously discussed with me in order for them to honor my warranty claim!

What Reliable did not know was, that I had to wait over one week at the Ford dealer to have my remanufactured tranny arrive. During that week, I phoned them several times, and spoke to the manager, who told me that I would have to speak with the owner. THE OWNER NEVER PHONED!!

I got pissed off, the last time that I talked to the manager and was told that if I could not be polite, that I should not phone again. I wanted smash that I guy so hard that I could taste it!!

But, there was nothing that I could do. Since then, I have been reading about trannys. Bought a Chilton manual, and saw that there were ways that a tranny could easily be reassembled wrong. I am here on this forum, to find out what could have happened to my tranny, and then I want to get those guys at Reliable Transmission, and stick them with my $3,250 dollars that I paid them.

That's the whole story, Steve.

Thanks for your help,
George

 

Hmmm that is unfortunate. I have used Reliable in Hillsboro and Beaverton Or, twice. A friend of mine pointed me their way, he was a professional mechanic BTW.

My friend took his Camaro Z28 in for a routine check up. The shop dropped the pan, ran checks etc and said his tranny was fine at 100K miles. So they turned his business away.

Anytime a shop turns business away I start to trust them. I also want to recommend Stop and Go Repair in Portland Or for the same reason, they have saved me much money by diagnosing problems for me over the phone and telling how to fix it myself. or pointed me to other shops that specialized in certain repairs that could do it better than they could. Like I said turn away a fast buck and you have my future business.

Anyway, back to Reliable. They are a bit expensive but in my two dealings with them, so far the results have been excellent.

My 94 F250 was rebuilt in about 97 and has racked up maybe 30K miles mostly towing a 8,000# trailer thru torturous conditions, high heat, sub freezing, nasty mountains etc. No problems.

My 96 SS just had it's tranny rebuilt last month due to known issues with the 4L60 tranny, I am a member of NAISSO, the Impala club and we talk about this all the time. So far so good. The shop steered me away from some options that might cost more and make them more money, they also steered me away from a few options which would not give me the results I wanted, his recommendations matched what I have read over the past 6 years of being a member of NAISSO and from magazine "How to" articles, in otherwords a sanity check.

I have not had a warranty issue yet, so I cannot speak to that. I am due on Thursday to come in for my REQUIRED 1 month check up and I will bring a copy of this thread to Jim at Reliable.

Don't know if they will do anything but won't hurt and it always helps good businesses to know that their customers talk about them(good or bad). BTW I am always the first one to beach up a storm when things go wrong so I am not saying any of the above just to be nice.

Sorry to hear about your problem.

Good Luck,

Jim Henderson