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Originally posted by sweet91accord -
My 700R4 4-speed auto bit the dust, so I'm swapping it out for a much beefier TH350 3-speed auto. I have 3.08 rear gears, so the TH350 will be just fine on the freeway. Anyway, I picked up the trans over the weekend and ordered all the tubing and fittings for the trans cooler install. My trans builder's website said these come with a new stamped steel pan, but when I picked it up he said he hates them because they always leak and he's the first one to hear about it, so he threw in a nice polished cast aluminum pan with a drain plug, free of charge. He didn't have the converter yet when I picked it up either, so he is drop shipping it to my house for free. That's good customer service if you ask me. He even met me at the shop on a weekend so I could pick it up at a convenient time.
I'll be installing the transmission cooler and fabricating new transmission cooler lines out of zinc plated 3/8 steel tubing and AN fittings. I'm using coiled tubing, which is a pain to straighten out. Would you believe the cheapest tubing straightener I can find is TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS? So I build one for $35:
Last pic is a piece that hasn't been through the straightener, and one that has. Does it do as good of a job as the $200 straightener? Nope, but for $35 or so, I'm pleased with it.
Originally posted by sweet91accordComment
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Got the 700R4 out. Went nice and easy, nothing fought me, which was nice. I even remembered to unplug and detach everything!
Hoping to get the TH350 in there tonight or tomorrow. It really depends on how motivated I feel.
Originally posted by sweet91accordComment
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Yea these trucks are great to work on. I only had to pull the starter to change out the oil pan gasket, all the bolts were easy to get to.
Is that a TH350C?Comment
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Yeah, I love all the room.Originally posted by Accrdwgnguy View Post
Trans is just a regular old TH350, no lockup. I wanted something that would hold up to something a little..."spicier" down the road. TH350C has a relatively weak input shaft, and I didn't want to pay for a billet shaft (if such a thing exists for the TH350C to begin with).
I got some of my trans cooler lines bent up and installed. Screwed up the top line to the cooler, but I was out of tubing, so I screwed with it and tweaked it until I got it to work. It's ugly, and I'll probably redo it down the road, but for now, it will do the job.
Originally posted by sweet91accordComment
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All done! Just need to find the right vacuum tee to tie my climate control/cruise back in and I'm golden. I initially had the vacuum modulator for the TH350 tee'd off of those lines, but they just aren't big enough to work the modulator, and the thing was short shifting even with the pedal mashed. I hooked it straight to the intake manifold and it works perfectly.
Nice, firm shifts now! It's friggin' awesome. My old 700R4 slipped so bad, it would slowly drag the engine down to the RPMs for the next gear. This thing just snaps them off, but is buttery smooth at low throttle. Believe it or not, it's actually faster than the old 700R4, even with taller gearing. The higher stall really wakes it up when you want it to.
I did end up having to relocate my cooler. My dumb ass forgot to account for the hood latch coming through the core support, and it was running right into my cooler. I had to drop it down a few inches, which gave me the perfect excuse to bend new hard lines since I had to buy another coil of tubing to finish up the transmission side of the cooler lines.
Pics:
Originally posted by sweet91accordComment
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