The truck had a major blowout a couple of years ago. I was driving over Monarch Pass in Colorado hauling the camper and trailer when the transmission gave out on the downhill side. It was on a Sunday so it was $450 to get towed 9 miles to the Gunnison KOA. I called some friends and one buddy came up with his car hauler and another buddy with his truck and grabbed my trailer. They towed me back down to the house I was working on and the truck sat until I was able to get to it. I traded some work for a 1999 Subaru Outback to drive around while I worked on the house and contemplated what I was going to do to fix the tranny.

I considered swapping the tranny for a manual, I’m really not a fan of automatics but ultimately settled on rebuilding my existing transmission myself. I’m not a mechanic but I’ve done some pretty major automotive repairs in the past like engine rebuilds and steering/suspension overhauls as well as a few other projects. I believe you can learn anything from YouTube so I set out to find some good videos and found a website put together by a long time transmission mechanic, Transmission Bench. He sold a rebuild kit and a video set that was very detailed and while I might have been able to source the parts cheaper, I bought the initial rebuild kit and some other parts from him to support his business.

Removal Notes:

Pulling the transmission was a project. My buddy that helped me with the cabinet project also allowed me to use his shop to work on this project. In order to get the transmission out, I had to remove the drive shafts, the front part of the exhaust, the torsion bars, T case, and everything connected. I tried for hours to get it out without removing some of this stuff but once I submitted everything came out pretty easy. I rented a torsion bar tool from O’Reilly’s but I had most of the other tools needed.

Parts:

Starting out, I purchased the rebuild master kit for my vehicle from Transmission Bench which came with the video package. I also bought the Transgo reprogramming kit, AFL repair kit with reamer, rear main seal and oil pan kit for the engine, and all new U-joints and center bearing. As I tore into the transmission I found other parts I needed to replace but I’ll go into that later. I bought the eco friendly mineral spirits and I’ll just say I’ll never use it again. 

Once I got the transmission apart I found that most of it was in pretty good shape but there were a few things that had to be replaced. You always hope to find a smoking gun when it comes to a big rebuild but while I found some wear and tear I didn’t find anything that I could point to and say “there it is”. That said there was some parts that definitely needed to be replaced Just nothing that was a definitive reason for all out failure. I’m really glad I rebuilt it myself and I feel better with the heavy duty shift kit installed considering I haul a trailer and camper around the mountains of Colorado about 90% of the time. 

So, while I didn’t get a smoking gun for the overall failure of the tranny I did have at least one “there it is” moment. I have never owned an automatic before this truck. I’ve always driven stick and even had a CDL and drove 80k to 120k lb trucks for Halliburton for a while. I downshift when going downhill to save the breaks and a bit before the tranny went out, 2nd gear stopped working when I manually downshifted.  As I was working through the videos and we got to the point where you pull out the intermediate band, he makes a statement about how it is likely to have no signs of wear because all it does in engage 2nd when you manually downshift, yeah, mine was jacked haha. 

I didn’t want to take a chance with the torque converter. I took it to a machine shop that came highly recommended by my buddy with the transmission shop. I had them rebuild my converter and had them beef it up. I’m not sure what exactly they did but I told them what I use it for and they did her up like they would a class A RV. 

I think one of the best feelings in the world is spending several weeks working on a big project, you get to the end, you have it all bolted together and you’re ready to test drive. She fires up, you top off the fluids, shift it back and forth between reverse and drive and everything is running smooth. You open up the garage door and pull out and it hardly moves. At least not like it should for the rpms of the engine. I pulled it back in, called my two buddies that were both transmission mechanics, they both had some ideas but nothing definitive. 

For three days I tried to trouble shoot the problem and finally figured out that the transmission thought it was in 4 low and that everything was actually fine with the transmission. I was just about to pull that damn thing back out too. It took this long to figure out because it wasn’t in 4 low according to the transfer case. The front tires were not moving the vehicle and I know this because I got stuck in the mud turning it around and had to shift into 4 hi to get out. I finally realized it and shifted it in and out between 4 low, 2 hi, and 4 high for several cycles before it finally kicked out and everything started to work great. I test drove it up the hill and used the manual downshift on the way back down. Everything works, including manual second, it shifts and runs very smooth. I haven’t gotten on it yet but I want to break it in a little bit before abusing it. 

I’m not sure what happened exactly, my one buddy said that this happens often enough to not be rare but not common either. The T Case, while original to the vehicle, was never used in 4WD by the previous owner. I bought it in southern CA and the only thing he used the truck for was hauling his fifth wheel camper or huge boat around. He told me the only time he had ever shifted into 4WD was to demonstrate that it worked when he sold it to me, he wasn’t even entirely sure how to do it. He showed me the title that said that he had bought the truck in 2000 with only 15k miles on it so while he wasn’t the original owner he practically was. At this point I’m not going to worry about what caused this, it’s got to be something in the electronics. The truck did sit for 2 years so weird random things are bound to happen. I did change all the fluids in the truck including the T case. For now I’m pretty happy with the rebuild, I’ll try to remember to post an update in a year or so.

This truck has 215k miles on it now, and it has been used as a work horse for pretty much all of that time. I believe that there is no such thing as a mechanical device that never breaks down so these things are bound to happen. I’ll admit there was a long time that I was tired of working on cars but this project actually kinda revitalized some of that passion. I’m getting a little too old to be crawling under a vehicle but once the tranny was on the bench I found the whole process very enjoyable. I tend to be a very meticulous type person and this was definitely up my ally. I always say I have OC, I’m obsessive/compulsive but it’s not quite a disorder. It really helped to have such a detailed video and I wouldn’t have been as confident without it. There are several parts that could be put in either way and the guy in the video is really good about demonstrating the proper way to install each and every piece. I don’t know, we’ll see how it goes over the years, I tend to keep vehicles for 10+ years so I plan to have this for a long time.