Tranny Issues

[Knuckles69]

Hey guys, need to pick your brains on this one. think I blew my tranny up about a month ago. was on the highway doing roughly 75 and could feel the transmission starting to slip. by the time i made it the 7 miles to the next exit i had 0 drive. managed to coast it into the gas station to take a look. motor runs just fine, shifter (column) works fine for moving through gears. when it all happened the trans was making some jingling noise (almost like a timing chain broken). started it last night, motor still runs/starts just fine, but the sound from the tranny sounds way worse. planning of having it towed up to the tranny shop tomarrow or thursday, but just wanted to see if anyone can think of anything else i should check first? can't push it in park so id assume its not a broken axle. and i doubt id hear noise from a broken shift linkage. tranny fluid level is perfect, no visible damage to tranny case. can anybody think of anything else?

1994 olds 88, 3.8l FWD 4t60e trans

thanks all!

[Knuckles69]

I should add that the car has un 90k miles on it and this is the second time this transmission has gone on me. first time i blew up a spider gear and put a nice hole in the transmission case. been about a year and a half since that incident

[maxwedge]

Internal issue for sure.

[Knuckles69]

Update:

Had the transmission rebuilt. Said and done for $1200 with a two year warranty.

Had the car for about 2 weeks running only short errands around town. Tried to go see my family about 80 miles away and right at about 60 miles the tranny let go again! Had it towed back to the shop and now almost 90days later I finally have it back again.

Apparently the shop thought it to be a cooling issue that they missed the first time. Okay, I can understand that I guess. I let the owner know that I had bought an external tranny cooler awhile back, and if it would help the car he could put that on there. So, when I picked up the car the guy tells me that they cut the lines to the radiator and they're just running it through the tranny cooler alone now.

Okay, is that a legit fix? Seems like it should work to me, but that still doesn't mean that's the correct way to do it. AND, because the owner installed my parts my warranty is now void. What should I do at this point? I don't want this thing to overheat and melt down again. Leave it alone? Will an external do the job as well or better than the radiator cooling it? Put a new radiator on and hook it up the right way? Or go back to the shop and pitch a bitch? I just don't know enough about how transmissions cool to argue my point with them.

thoughts? anybody?

[maxwedge]

Ok he agreed to install your parts then voided your warranty, not legal in NYS. He should have said this was going to happen beforehand. Also the cooler must be of sufficient size to replace the inline one in the rad. Also when rebuilding a trans it is imperative to flush the cooler and lines, was this done?

[Knuckles69]

Yea, thats what kinda pissed me off from the beginning. (Aside from the fact that it took almost 90days to rebuild the tranny under warranty). I'm even more irritated that he knows I work in automotive wholesale and I could have gotten any radiator he wanted to use for next to nothing. The cooler he installed I had originally bought for my truck, so I should think it would be sufficient, if not a bit overkill. Can an oversize cooler hurt anything? Truthfully, I would have expected the "Trasmission Specialist" to know this stuff and relay it to me, but the more I deal with them the more I worry. I do know that when they pulled the trans out they blew all the lines out with compressed air. Where is the cooler itsself? Is that internal transmission or are you refering to the cooler in the radiator? He suggested bringing the car back to him in 7-10days so he could look it over again. I can ask him about the cooler flush when I'm up there this weekend. Anything else I should ask about while I'm there?

[maxwedge]

The cooler is in the radiator or was. That requires a chemical flush, but is now out of the circuit. A truck size cooler should do it and no issues with it being too big other than if it completely blocked the a/c condenser. And how do they justify not warrantying the trans now, I would go on the offense with that issue!