I have a 77 Pinto 2.3 with C3 that I have some questions about...
When I drive the car the 1-2 shift is a little sloppy & when I floor it the kickdown linkage seems ineffective. It takes a lot before the transmission will go from 3rd back 2 2nd.
Are there any adjustments I can make to help these issues?
Matt, valve body pistons may be hanging up check trans fluid for full, clean not turning brown or smells burnt. Fred :)
I'm with fred. Check the fluid, if suspected as the probable cause, drop the pan to drain all the fluid in the casing, then pull the plug on the torque converter to drain that as well as most of your fluid will be in there. Once done, reassemble and fill it back up. Should that not fix the problem, I would pull the valve body and install a TransGo kit (I just installed one in my 73's C4 and it worked wonders on the 2-3 shift).
Hmmmm. I wonder if I have a sticky valve, cuz the transmission sat outside for about a year or so before I installed it. I might go ahead & drain some of the fluid & put in some lucas to see if it helps free the sticky valves. Couldn't hurt any.
Cleaning the valve body isn't to hard to do, it just takes a few hours to remove all of the spools. I pulled every spool out and polished them by putting them in a cordless drill chuck to spin them around in a towel with some mothers aluminum polish on it. They cleaned up nicely and moved really smoothly without any binding when I was finished. On top of that I installed the shift kit.
Quote from: r4pinto on April 13, 2011, 04:33:47 PM
Hmmmm. I wonder if I have a sticky valve, cuz the transmission sat outside for about a year or so before I installed it. I might go ahead & drain some of the fluid & put in some lucas to see if it helps free the sticky valves. Couldn't hurt any.
Quote from: dave1987 on April 13, 2011, 04:25:04 PM
I'm with fred. Check the fluid, if suspected as the probable cause, drop the pan to drain all the fluid in the casing, then pull the plug on the torque converter to drain that as well as most of your fluid will be in there. Once done, reassemble and fill it back up. Should that not fix the problem, I would pull the valve body and install a TransGo kit (I just installed one in my 73's C4 and it worked wonders on the 2-3 shift).
I bought the Transgo kit for my C3 some time ago, but haven't installed it yet. As I remember from the instructions, there were 2 options for shift firmness. Which did you choose, and did it affect your gas mileage any (other than maybe using your right foot a bit more)?
I didn't remove everything to make it shift hard in every position. I did make the 1-2 shift firmer and the 2-3 slightly firmer, but there was one other check "valve" I could remove to make it shift harder in third but I put it back in because it was to hard of a shift! lol.
Keep in mine, I have a C4, but the C3 is similar. Shift quality is just about the same as well.