It's Puttin' a Whuppin' on Me

I think my posting on the CorvairCenter forum does a good job describing the status of my ongoing saga with Ringo’s transmission.

This is getting REALLY frustrating! I've installed the missing e-clip, put everything back together, poured in $20+ of ATF, and it still won't automatically upshift. During last night's test drive, I was able to get it to go into Drive by accelerating to over 30 mph, movng the shifter into N, then back into D. This worked a few times, and another couple times, I had to repeat the N then D sequence before it would shift. Then, if it was in D, anything more than feathering the throttle would cause it to downshift back into L. I guess it's possible the e-clip popped back off, but I'm thinking it's a bad pump.

Regardless, I'm at the point of dropping the drivetrain and replacing the powerglide with my one spare that hasn't operated for 30+ years. There's still fluid in the replacement, but probably not much. The pan is off, but otherwise the tranny's intact. In addition to pulling the valve body and thoroughly cleaning all those parts, what else should I do to maximize my chance for success?

The responses to this and a similar posting on VirtualVairs included:

• "It’s still a governor problem. Put one in that you know is good before you give up on the current transmission."
• "Grooves in the bore where the governor goes may be leaking preventing the required pressure buildup."
• "Adjust the Manual Valve Linkage"
• "Adjust the Low Band"
• "Old, worn, bad, flex seals will cause that to happen. The PG needs an overhaul. Put a kit in it and it'll be fine, hopefully."
• "I recently installed a pg in my 64 that had been sitting dormant for 20+ years. All I did to it was drop the pan, clean the filter, and add a bottle of Trans-X to the fluid. It is quiet, the fluid still looks good after a couple hundred miles, and it shifts just fine."
• "I too, tried swapping in another tranny that hadn't run in many moons. (Don't do it!)It turned out to be full of garbage and contaminated the fluid in the torque converter and still didn't work. I ended up pulling the drivetrain 5 times till the problems were finally resolved."

So, what am I to do? Well, I’ll give the governor swap one more try; this time with the known working one out of Heidi. If that doesn’t fix it, out comes the drivetrain. I’ve inherited a Powerglide rebuild kit at some point and I’m hoping all the parts are there. I think I’ll try rebuilding the spare tranny and install it rather than risk putting junk into the torque converter.

Oh yeah. One other thing. Throughout the test drive the clacking from the lazy lifter was almost as maddening as the lack of shifting. I've given the lifter plenty of time to get its act together. Looks like I'll be pulling the rocker cover off the left side and re-adjusting the pre-load.