Building my transmission was one of my favorite projects. Rather interesting and fun.

 

Got the trans out last night. Came out fairly easy. Its just so damn sketchy from the moment the trans breaks loose from the engine to the time you have it down on the ground. There is no way to strap the trans down to the jack while the trans is in the truck. So its a balancing act unit you get it on the ground.

Anyway, I'm going to tear into it tonight and see if the low roller is the issue. I'm excited to get home

 

Well I'm assuming I found it.. The low roller clutch looked good. I don't think you can install it upside down in the early model cores. And all the rollers were in place.. So I scratched my head for a quick second and this came to me..:


And this...



So here is what it looked like when I pulled the reaction carrier. I noticed the low roller clutch was sitting pretty deep in the grooves. Keep in mind I don't have anything that has shown me it needed to sit higher, it just looked funny now that I figured the low roller was giving me my first gear issues.. So it popped in my head that I have been trying to figure out WTF that spacer ring was for.. Slipped right in to the reaction carrier and with the low roller installed on top of that, it sits right in the middle of the grooves.. So I'm pretty confident that was the issue. I have the early model core so this roller doesn't have the feet on the bottom of it. So that spacer must have to be in place to keep the low roller clutch from sitting too low in the bore and missing the center support..?



Without the spacer below the roller:

 

Agreed. It took me 3 tries to get my 80e to work perfectly, still tons of fun.

If you do the internal dual feed mod, for the love of God remove the reverse checkball. I learned that if you don't then reverse takes time and a stab at the throttle to engage. How embarrassing. Lol

 

Get a harbor freight trans jack. It's worth it.

 

I do have one. There is no way to ratched the trans to the jack when its up in the truck. I don't have any clearance to open and close the ratched since the truck body hugs the trans so close. The jack works really well for putting the trans in but not so much taking it out. It slides all over the jack coming down.

Oh, and I did remove the rev checkball.. Its the only checkball I removed. Thanks for the heads up though!

 

I got the low roller flipped around, and on top of the spacer. All the internals are back in the case so I just have to put the valvebody on and get it installed tomorrow/saturday.

 

Woke up in the middle of the night on Thursday and realized I didn't torque the valve body down before putting the pan on so Friday when I got home from work, I pulled the pan, tightened the vb up and got the trans back in the truck. Took me a good bit but I got it driving that night. Everything works perfectly. 1st gear feels great, but damn it really shifts firm into second. I'm playing with the shift pressures now to try and lighten it up at part throttle. 0.110" was too much to drill the 2nd feed IMO. It feels really good at WOT but its way to harsh for daily driving. 2-3 and 3-4 feel awesome.

Thanks for the help everyone! Sure feels good to build something yourself and it come out better than expected (the second try )....

 

Good job on the fix man...and yes .110 is too big for the 1-2 feed..go down to a .93..i usually drill .93 on all 1-2 2-3 and 3-4 and use no wavys and they shift awesome

 

Glad to hear you got it squared away