6spd trans upgrades
 

Are upgraded valve bodies and shift kits still a thing? I know there are different converters. Just curious what upgrades are out there for them or if tuning takes care of most of it.

Maybe there is stuff for really high horsepower stuff but I've never looked.

Tuning the 6L80e is the best way to make it do what you want. A ton can be done to shift feel and performance as well has torque converter changes to help it live longer. Stock calibrations lock in the converter in 2-6 gear.

They hold a ton of power when tuned right. Just to rebuild them stock is 3-4k. Upgrades make that sky rocket fast. I was worried about my high mileage trans and made some calls to my favorite trans builder up here near me in Ft Worth and I called Circle D and spoke to them about it. I also talked to Sam about it (owner of AMP)

On these the valve body is an integrated electronic unit so it isn't really a thing these days and shift kits made things happen faster and harder. You can just do that through the tune if that's your thing. But if you pull so much torque management out that it bangs shifts then it starts breaking things. On mine, Sam reduced the torque management a little and I can feel the difference. I asked if I could have it to where it barked the tires in second and he said it would just tear up the trans. He would know, he has a ton of 6L and 8L cars running around flawlessly with near or over 1k hp on stock transmissions.

Kinda figured. The diablo tune is a big improvement over stock but I'd like to have a tuner dial it in.

Custom street tune is where it's at with someone that's got some experience doing it. I'm sure you can get it a lot better yourself and probably dialed in nicely if you had a tuning program and spent some time with it. For me, I get low prices from one of the best tuners there is so I just let him do his thing on it.

Everything I've heard from everyone though is too not fight the OEM strategies on these transmissions and mostly to just let them do their thing, but you can make a couple of minor adjustments that go a long way. Mine, I'm pretty sure the only trans tune adjustment is a minor reduction in the timing drop for the tq management. The minor change made a significant difference. Gorske was running around chirping tires in 2nd gear in his early videos, and he said they got a little aggressive with the tuning. I noticed in his later videos it doesn't chirp in second anymore so I'm guessing they turned that down.

Usually it's a good plan to keep the RPM's down on autos to help them live too, and thanks to short gears, we don't need to turn high rpms. Tuners have said these trucks don't get faster by revving them out further, which makes sense, with the short gears you'll land well past peak tq during the shift if you rev past 6k, instead of plopping right on top of peak tq keeping the rev/shift point right around 6k. I believe Gorske tested this and turned his up, then back down.

If you haven't turned up your shift point yet that helps a bit too. These trucks short shift a little on the stock shift point 5500 rpm, they will land around the mid to upper 3k on the next gear, mine plops into the next gear right around 4k which is peak tq and carries the next gear nicely.

I shift mine at 6650, lol, and torque management is turned DOWN, she will bark them thru 4th if I tighten up my belt and make 15 psi. It's holding on fine for now but maybe I should turn up the TQ management a bit. I'm stating to feel something is out of balance, might have broken a trans mount, I'm going to look in the am...

I love it to chirp tires on a shift, but Sam made a good point.. at the point it's doing that it's just banging the shit out of the hard parts in the trans and not going any faster, so I left mine more tame to help it last. Not exactly what he said but that was essentially the point. I was a bit bummed by it but it makes sense to leave some in there. I believe it's one of the main things that makes these new transmissions take so much power compared to previous transmissions. It cuts a large amount of power on clutch engagement, which also helps the clutches hold the power during the shift too.

You might play with your shift points a bit. Your setup will be a little different with a blower and a cam. But it's cool to hear your trans is holding up to all that power AND the higher rpm and hard shifts.

But being a screw (PD) blower, I would guess it starts running out of steam in the upper RPM range. If so dialing back the shift points may make it faster.

I would talk to ace performance, my 6l80 build was no where near 3k. I know my g8 doesn’t carry the same weight as these trucks but it’s been holding 800+ whp for 5 seasons now and I believe he has a car that’s holding the 6l80 1/8th mile record.