Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

You have been very busy...
Direct Drive valve spring retainer. If this is pinched you will not engage Direct Drive. This was not your problem.

Throttle body adjustment screw....The one that your'e not supposed to touch..I'm fairly sure that it will simply raise the default throttle pressure and delay the onset of DD Clutch engagement...sort of lessening the adjustment of your control rod from your carburretor. I believe that this is not your problem.

Reactor shaft end play is supposed to be up to 17 thou but 23 thou should be fine. Once you get up to around 100 thou the stator starts to wear on the first turbine. That is not your problem.

Bushings and input shaft... it would not hurt to change these while you have the chance, although if the DD Clutch is hanging on and almost stalling the car then it is probably not the problem.

Blocked ports. I believe not as the same ports actuate the DD clutch engagement.

If it works perfectly some times and not others then something is likely to be sticking. many of the valves in the transmission act on differential pressure between two points and something may be too closely matched to operate normally.

The DD Clutch should disengage automatically ( pardon the pun) without drama at around 10- 15 mph and on kickdown below approx 50 mph.

Do you have a spare valve body assembly which you could substitute for your assembly. There may be someone in your area with one from a working spare Twin ultra trans, who may be willing to loan one to you, to verify your set-up.

PT

i did have the dd not disengage ,,, i was screwing around with the throttle rod on the engine, had it out of wack. the cross shaft and the throttle and the carb linkage, had it out of wack,,

when it was put back like it was supposed to be, worked fine,

Thanks Peter and Riki for your help i agree about valve body and TV linkage adjustment. The owner has given permission to purchase another if needed. i adjusted linkage per book and then changed from there with inconsistant results I have figured out that the two front converter bushings and reaction shaft bushings are blocking apply and release passages by mocking up parts and dying input shaft to see where bushings are in relation to passages. This only happens if input shaft runs in full forward position. a light wear pattern at bottom of converter snout suggests that it does. To me this would explain release when hot as clearances increase and fluid thins. adjusted bushing position to compensate for full forward movement of input shaft.dont know that this is the problem but now can eliminate as a possibility if it happens again .

(PRAISE THE LORD) Its fixed just wanted to let everyone know trans is working great now TCC is unlocking now and shifts are spot on. The problem was of my own doing.Something I should have not been able to do I did by mistake. I had the governor and parking gear misalighned with the planetary ring gear shaft. The little pin between the splines of the shaft that indexes the gov assembly with the wide grove of the gov parking gear splines was worn down this alowed assembly in any position and restricted fluid flow to and from governor.Just by luck I had it one spline off alowing it to work but not right. I Thank all of you for your help, maybe this info will help somebody thats having similar problems after a rebuild.

Glad you found the problem and resolved it. And thank you for posting your mistake so others could watch for it and not make same error.

Quote:

12 years late for OP but in happening to read this thread, if he has a 55th shaft then he has zero endplay in his converter here. The 0.023 is the play in the reactor shaft itself (0.015 to 0.035 is possible from the factory).

This is why it's important to subtract that play from your reading as shown in Ross's video, to get the actual number. The original 54GS design gave the play to the sprag clutch assembly instead of the reactor shaft, which is why it was OK to measure just the reactor shaft originally. This can only be done on 54GS converters with their original reactor shafts (the part was superseded with the 55th type). See also this post. So OP might have been OK but this is very bad practice for everyone else (and OP's needing to use a 0.110 thrust washer is concerning, though remotely possible with a worst case factory tolerance stack-up).

In other words, the reactor shaft has an endplay of 15 to 35 thou which is not adjustable, but will add to the total endplay of the actual turbomachinery components, when measuring off the reactor shaft. This is why they had the factory tool to extend past the reactor shaft and engage with the first turbine, to measure the endplay.

For reference, there are four (five on 54GS) rotating thrust bearing surfaces, that being both sides of the first turbine washer, and the inboard side of the thrust washer on either side of the reactor clutch. This gives a clearance of 0.0025 to 0.0043 (0.002 to 0.0035 on 54GS) for each surface from the factory. Contrary to popular belief, thermal expansion does not change this much; only about 0.0005 from room temperature to a 180 degree operating temperature.