Stranded 1991 FJ80 named Vera - transmission stopped working

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Hey, question and minor update.

Question is about the dust shield piece that goes between the adapter plate and the flex plate. There was some kind of gasket material on the inside of the smaller rim, sealing the cover against the block and bearing journal. It flaked off, and I'm wondering how important it is to replace it. Maybe just a very thin bead of RTV to maintain the dust seal? Thanks for any thoughts!

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Update as follows:

Driveshaft u-joints finally done.

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Cracked trans oil pan armor mount bracket prepped for minor welding.

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And my local trusted transmission shop has found and ordered me a torque converter from his supplier so I don't have to roll the dice on a chain store reman.
 
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I'm hoping to button up the valve body tonight. It was pretty yucky inside due to the torched clutch, I assume. Glad i got all that gunk and debris out of there. And this is not the biggest headache of this whole process (that'd currently be a tie between the engine oil pan gasket and figuring out how to measure clutch piston movement), but there's well over 150 parts in the valve body, so when I stopped in the middle of something I'd start worrying about an earthquake or some other black swan of a calamity that'd tip over my trays.

Here's some pics...

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Just a few pics -

Valve Body rebuild complete.


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Oil Pan broken mounting tab welded and painted.


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Manual lever shaft installed with new seals and new spacer washer/tube that gets staked in place. The spacer has a cut-out for the roll pin that fixes the manual valve engagement "paddle" with the gear detents and such. You align the cut-out with the hole, hammer in the pin, rotate the spacer so the cutout is off the hole and the pin is trapped, then stake the spacer in place.

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Low-Rev clutch piston with fresh o-rings & return springs installed in case. Pics of home-made spring compressor in the mix. I think it's a stand-in for sst 09350-36010.

I might as well say - fresh o-rings or seals or gaskets are a given for every component that's going back in or on this baby. All hard parts cleaned, all soft parts replaced.




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Output shaft and planetary gears installed.

Whatever that next clutch is called is also in. FSM called for placing the trans upright, and using the holes in the front surface of the shaft to thread in bolts for grip. It calls for M6x1mm pitch, and the trans oil pan bolts fit the bill. It was difficult getting the clutch assembly to mesh with the flukes on the frictions as well as the slots in the case, but after a little grunting and mumbling, I got a pattern of pressure with clockwise rotation of the inner ring using the threaded in bolts. Eventially it dropped all the way in so that the assembly cleared the grove for its associated snap ring. Whew!




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Had to fix an oven and change both tires on my daily driver Saturday, so that's as far as I got on the transmission.

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Will keep plugging away. Meantime, suppliers really struggle with the difference in torque converter between the 3FE/A440F and the much more common 1FZ combo, and my local transmission shop didn't feel like they could confidently buy the correct part. So they're having it rebuilt by their service, and I'll pay about $50 more to get my own OEM Converter rebuilt by my local shop's trusted service. I'm 100% fine with that. It's going to Nashville, back probably late this week.
 
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Continuing to stack parts in slowly. Media upload not working right now, will try to add photos some other time.

The next piece to go in is the oil pump, which will be a wonderful milestone as it completes the rotating parts and IMO the most mind boggling of the measurements. Still need to do the temp install, check end play, and (fingers crossed) final install, but with that done, I can tip the case back down and start on the pistons and such. There's not much measuring on install of accumulator pistons and valve body etc, or all the complex and tight meshing of hard parts (with rubber o-rings in the cross-fire!), so I feel like that'll go pretty quickly in comparison to the dang puzzle box that is the rotating clutches, gears, and brakes.

I'll consult with my transmission SME friend - make sure there's not something basic I'm forgetting before I button the case up.

Then I guess I need to check up on my torque converter. And plan an install day with my buddy who helped me pull it. Gettin' there...
 
I know you are itching to get this back in and your 80 back on the road. But I will tell you that you will look back on this experience and photos admiring the engineering that went into these pieces and the experience you had during the rebuild. I often catch myself flipping through photos of my shiny new engine with clean pistons and fresh paint on the block.

You've done a service to the mud community, just make sure you keep an eye on your photo links. Nothing sucks more than having a build thread loose the photos because the host blows balls.
 
SmokingRocks said:
I know you are itching to get this back in and your 80 back on the road. But I will tell you that you will look back on this experience and photos admiring the engineering that went into these pieces and the experience you had during the rebuild. I often catch myself flipping through photos of my shiny new engine with clean pistons and fresh paint on the block.

You've done a service to the mud community, just make sure you keep an eye on your photo links. Nothing sucks more than having a build thread loose the photos because the host blows balls.
Click to expand...

Appreciate this, SmokingRocks. This has been therapy for me, honestly, learning how to power through and keep moving on a project that frankly scares me. I just told a friend that I'm only 75% sure it's even going to work when I put it back in, but I'm OK. As you say, the learning's been incredible.

I'm with you on the photos - bought a new-to-me motorcycle a few months ago, ready to take on a couple of basic items, and finding all the photobucket pics on the main forum "missing". And the bike's a 2006, so mostly the OP's long since stopped looking at them.
 
Minor note - the regular FSM is quite detailed on the Transmission, so I tended to rely on that since I have a hard copy, and only a PDF of the transmission FSM (quickly got tired of printing pages as I went). So, I glanced though the transmission FSM a few days ago, just to verify that there's not something critical in there that's not in the main FSM.

I didn't find any missing steps, but I was relieved to see that there's more detail on the Valve Body in the transmission FSM. I was super careful and lost sleep over documenting and keeping the approximately 200 pieces in order while rebuilding over several days, but had a kid/pet/earthquake spilled my egg cartons, I actually think the Transmission FSM would have allowed a slow but complete process for re-assembly.
 
Final pieces coming in, and plans to bolt the beast back in the truck on Saturday.

Some upgraded juice.

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Rebuilt original Torque Converter looking blue

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Not this beast, the transmission beast...

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Rebuilding breathers. New hose is just by-the-foot vac line in the closest size the local store had.

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Original breather plug was pretty brittle and a couple of the retaining teeth broke right off. Fresh new oem plug was cheap, new o-ring came with the Transmission rebuild kit.

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Trying to remember how this thing connected up. Looks good. These just run up to the connections up top the fill tube. These are the moments when my "before" pics often come in handy. Otherwise I would not have remembered that one of these hoses gets captured by the same clamp that guides the kick-down cable housing.

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Big milestone over the weekend. And a slight hiccup.

My buddy (the one who's helping with the heavy lifting) and I discussed it and decided that the transmission + transfer was sooo awkward, we'd do ourselves a big favor by installing them separately. That was true to a point, because it's in!!

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But that introduced the hiccup, which is this...

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We're nearly 2" too tight to get the transfer on the output shaft. Rather than take the tranny back out and try the elephant on a tightrope trick of lifting both in together, I opted to remove that section of the exhaust. It'll give us a good 6". The flange bolts are shrunken with corrosion, and I don't have an oxy torch, so, no surprise they need to be cut out. I got the more difficult front flange separated last night, and I'll probably get the other side out and the transfer in on Thursday.

My goal is to get transfer in, driveshafts on, new tie rod assembly on (unrelated, but needed and a deal popped up on Amazon), wheels back on and put the truck back on the ground for the first time in about 5 months... before Christmas.

I wanted to be driving her before Christmas, but... moving on. If I don't post up in the meantime, Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it!

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Oh, one more thing so i don't forget. At a glance, it looks like there are two different sizes of transmission mounting bolts. There are three.

We easily identified long and short bolts - the short ones thread right into the adapter plate at 10 & 2 o'clock, the long ones go through the plate and thread into either the support brackets or the engine block, BUT...

...It's not that simple - the "long" bolts are not all the same and there's actually two different threads.

Fortunately, John was careful enough to figure out something was wrong before any real damage was done. Then when we put the bolts together we saw the issue.

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The finer thread bolts go in the brackets, the 2 x coarser thread ones are the hard-to-reach ones at the top (11 and 1 o'clock) that pass through the adapter and thread into the engine block. Not sure why there's two different threads, but I made a mental note to check that in future so I don't just pile different bolts together like they're the same.

Makes me wonder if that's why the guys who worked on JonHeld's rig back during the Carter administration left one out - cause they destroyed it trying to thread it into the wrong spot.
 
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Speaking of screw-ups, I couldn't rotate the engine to align the torque converter with the flex plate. Thought it was because the engine was seized, but it was actually because I mounted the dang flex plate backwards. :doh:

Here's the thread where Mud and me worked that out.

Next steps, unbolt the transmission, pray that nothing's broken thanks to my janky crescent wrench and weak arms trying to turn the engine, back the trans up, unbolt/flip/re-install the flex plate, re-mount the transmission.
 
tacosupreme said:
You should paint the timing marks a bright color on the flex plate. When you go to time the engine sometime down the road it will really help! Also that will assist in orienting the flex plate the correct direction.
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Should I feel more stupid or less stupid for admitting that I did that already. Well before installing the flex plate backwards?

I'm gonna go with more stupid, lol.

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This is an almost duplicate of another post where I posted up about a stuck engine that turned out to be a backwards-mounted flex plate AND mounting ring/spacer. It's also a solid update on some good transmission re-build progress.

My buddy earned sainthood by coming over on this freezing morning to help me re-do the process of unmounting and mounting the transmission so we could fix my flex plate error.

It seems like I used only partial logic... concerned that I would put the two flex plate rings in the wrong order, I got the order correct but flipped the whole stack. As a result, the dished ring ended up with its lip against the rear of the engine, which is what created the bind that was preventing the engine from moving. The flipped plate also stuck out further to the rear, which put the plat in a bind with the torque converter as well, so nothing would turn. In hindsight, I should have known something was up when I was able to torque the flex plate mounting bolts without having to prevent the flex plate from spinning.

We got the tranny unbolted and backed up without incident. We just created enough space to get tools in there. You've already seen the backwards flex plate, by this shot I'd already removed it. There was no damage visible, aside from maybe some very minor scratches on the inside of the bell housing, probably from assembling with the flex plate sticking further into the housing than intended.

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Here's the dished ring that was turned lip side against the engine/rear seal but was supposed to face the torque converter. Note the marks from where the bolts were when I disassembled originally. I missed that, among other things.

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Here's what I now believe to be the spacer ring between the engine and flex plate, complete with the new bolt marks I put in it. It's nicely chamfered on the edge probably so it won't rub the rear seal. It's symmetrical, so when I re-assembled I put my bolt marks toward the flex plate where they won't rub anything. Or, maybe I'm just hiding my shame.

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Here's the rear of the flex plate, with big glaring marks from contact with the torque converter.

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...and the center part or the rear that fits the dished mounting ring nicely.

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And the front of the flex plate, complete with nice round marks from the torque converter bolts and, of course, the timing marks.


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Once back together properly, everything moved as it should. As you'd expect, we had to brace the flex plate when torquing it in because the engine moves quite easily (especially since I also removed the plugs and loosened the belts trying in vain to "free the stuck engine" - *sigh*). We had easy access to flex plate teeth to move the flex plate with a pry bar from below. It was also quite easy to nudge the torque converter separately from the flex plate to get a bolt hole aligned with the access window. Torque converter bolts easily spun in with fingers, and we then rotated through all six again to snug them up.

Got a good list of things to check, add, and bolt back together, but this was another big hurdle.
 
Gradually! Just working FSM steps alongside other things I don't want to forget. Tonight was a truly balmy 64deg and mainly I got spark plugs and wires back installed, transfer case filled back up, transmission oil cooler tubes connected, and driveshafts installed.

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OK, she started up, kinda rough probably because I didn't put stabilizer in the gas and it's several months old. But she's running.

And she's moving, which is to say that 1st, 2nd and reverse function, but...

She's not shifting out of first gear when in D or 3. I ran her up to the redline in D and 3, and no shift. I assume it's actually 1st - I got to about 3000 rpm at 30mph. Then she'll coast.

I really have a hard time reading the dipstick on these things, probably because I recently filled it and there's still drips, but my first thought is that I overfilled. I put in 16qts, based on the spec and it still seems to be reading above the hot range according to the dipstick. The actual spec reads 16.3 US Qts. After re-reading Cruiser Jimmie's A440F rebuild thread where he stated that he put in about 11.5qts, I drained about 2.5qts, bringing me to about 13.5 as I'm pretty sure Jimmie didn't touch the Torque converter, so that would have been about full from before the rebuild. I put about 2qts in the TC.

I had followed the FSM procedure of putting the transmission in N manually when I hooked up the shift lever. I assumed that was meant to align the N on the lever with the Neutral Safety switch, so I bolted up the linkage with the lever at N. I tested alignment by just putting it in neutral to see it roll, then stopping and putting it in P to verify that it didn't roll.

I had also adjusted the kick-down cable a little tighter than before when I re-installed, but when she didn't up-shift I dialed back to spec of .5-1.5mm.

Any ideas?
 
Are you trying to drive it straight out of a fill?

You should have it on jackstands in the air and let it cycle through all gears slowly under zero driving load. Even manually filling the torque convertor, often times you'll need it to run through its paces with no load to make sure you're purging all the air out of the system. If there's air, it's possible you're not putting enough pressure through the valve body to force a shift.

If you haven't done that already, try it. Any time I've pulled a hydraulic automatic, I've suspended it on jackstands and let it cycle through each gear, starting with a "manual" 1st for 5-10 minutes, then allowing it to shift into 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. Reverse is last, because it often relies on a forward gear. As you learned in this thread, reverse and third seem to share a clutch pack, so hopefully "free-cycling" through your gears will help to purge any air.

Just be sure it's suspended level, so your dipstick readings are not thrown off.

Good luck- I picked up a 1991 today and stumbled upon this thread researching some weird behavior in reverse... then sat here for over an hour and geeked out on your project. Thanks for all your detail- I believe it will come in handy if I end up needing to rebuild mine.
 
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