What is my low Mile full hydro A442f worth? Thinking about electronic conversions...... (1 Viewer)

[DancesWithMutts]

I have a 90 HDJ81 with a auto.

I added the Wholesale Auto Nomad valve body for the 3rd gear T/C lockup.
The transmission works great, but I am not happy with the shifting. I have spent plenty of time messing with the throttle pressure cable, but it still either is too eager to downshift when pulling mountain passes, or is too aggressive when upshifting under low acceleration. I just have to manual shift way too often.

I think a compushift would be the answer, but I would have to convert to a different trans first. I have asked wholesale about my options, either a electronic A442 or a A750 ($$$).

I was wondering, what would my full hydro A442 be worth on the used market? It only has 200,000 Km's or 120,000 miles on it. I'd sell it with the valve body too, I figured it would be pretty desirable to someone wanting to do a diesel conversion.

 

[jellis]

I have a very detailed post from last year regarding an A750 conversion into our rigs. Incredibly not trivial. I am with you on the shift pattern frustration though, I especially don't like the 3rd-4th gear transition--always too early and has an awful AFR with lots of soot out the tailpipe.

I don't think the A442 with 120k miles would be worth that much, even with the VB. Look in the classifieds and see what they've been going for, a few have been on there lately, but at 120k miles I'd basically consider it a core so I'd say you could get maybe $1k w/o VB? For comparison I bought a rebuilt A442 with new OEM TC for $3750 last year, sans VB--but I'd say I got a good deal. I sold my old A442 & TC with ~200k miles for $750.

 

[DancesWithMutts]

I have a very detailed post from last year regarding an A750 conversion into our rigs. Incredibly not trivial. I am with you on the shift pattern frustration though, I especially don't like the 3rd-4th gear transition--always too early and has an awful AFR with lots of soot out the tailpipe.

Damn! Nice writeup, it really took the wind out of my A750 sails. I still wonder about putting in a electronic 442 with a compushift.

 

[jellis]

Well, you're welcome to have your wind taken out sooner than many $$$$$$$s + many months behind schedule later. =) I spent too much time looking into that, but the scoping was worth it to realize that I wasn't interested before coming to that conclusion half-way thru!

Programming is the big deal in general, just call up the Compushift guys for a no-BS analysis of difficulty. I can't remember if they said that WAT did all their Toyota stuff or only A750, but I remember them saying "We know nothing you HAVE to work with WAT". If that's true of the A442F as well then get in touch with WAT before proceeding. Also I'm not sure how to do the tacho hook up on our rigs, I probably addressed that in the writeup and it's probably the same problem to solve, but that comes to mind as an issue.

 

[nickolai]

Would a tweak to the Converter work? Wholesale also do different converters and maybe could fiddle with the stall?