4L80E Rebuild- Part 1

[BAD LS1]

I picked this 2wd, mid 90's vintage 4L80E up from Jeff a few months ago, first had the balls to rip it down now lol.

This is the first automatic Ive ever ripped down entirely and after watching countless youtube videos on rebuilds, reading manuals and getting ideas for what actually is mandatory upgrades i finally was ready to pull it down.

This decision to get into automatics now has been spurred on by the astronomical price places charge to either rebuild one or let alone do a performance build. Now i understand that you are paying for a shops expertise and experience they employ into a performance auto you buy from them. The manuals are great at point out corrective actions and flaws to look for, but that "black magic" that someone learned by trial and error is obviously not written anywhere.

So follow along with the tear down pics and see the steps it took to get it apart.

This 80E will end up behind a stout mill in the wifes 2000 Z28 come spring time, my goal with it is to get it to live and be fully manual with no electronic control other than TCC function.

[BAD LS1]

Now onto the stuff that turned the fluid black This clutch assembly that sits in the center of the trans i could tell was the issue when i was blowing it apart as atf was burned to the whole thing and smelled like electrical fire. this trans apparently had a linkage issue where it stuck 2 gears at once on and of course fried it, rest of the trans looks perfect. These clutch discs are normally a orangy brown color... of course the ones in question are black!

[SSDude]

Cool stuff there. I'm looking forward to following along.

[Yooformula]

cool shit Tom.

[michelle]

Subscribed.

[Dr.Buick]

Transmissions hard . you know who to call if you need help .


keep at it next is tig welding 102

[GTSLOW]

Good luck! Can't wait to see the results.

[Cryptic]

It's nice to have the luxury of tearing it down at your leisure and not when one blows in your daily driver. My truck blew a reverse band last year.

Nice pics Tom. Automatics are black magic to me.

[BAD LS1]

It's nice to have the luxury of tearing it down at your leisure and not when one blows in your daily driver. My truck blew a reverse band last year.

Nice pics Tom. Automatics are black magic to me.

Remember what the reverse band looks like? Was it the skinny one in the middle? or the thicker one all the way in the back?

[PonyKiller87]

Hey Tom, not sure if you've seen them yet but there are several good write ups with a ton of pictures over on www.performancetrucks.net The have some good pictures of the Transgo HD2 install which I can tell you the instructions from transgo suck.

[BAD LS1]

Hey Tom, not sure if you've seen them yet but there are several good write ups with a ton of pictures over on www.performancetrucks.net The have some good pictures of the Transgo HD2 install which I can tell you the instructions from transgo suck.

Yeah i actually have a rebuild bookmarked from that site!

Ill be putting the HD3 kit in this one which is the full manual version.

[Taetsch Z-24]

Want me to send you some exploded views from the parts catalog?

[Larrygto]

If you get good at this maybe you can build me one, cause I'm going to need one I just bought a blower and my trans was suspect to begin with!
Good luck!

[BR3W CITY]

Nice job man. When I bought my 4l80e I didn't have the time or balls to dig into it. I payed to have it redone, but it ain't cheap at all.

[BAD LS1]

If you get good at this maybe you can build me one, cause I'm going to need one I just bought a blower and my trans was suspect to begin with!
Good luck!

Yeah ill take that one on!

[fly5150]

hmmmmm
Maybe an Allison Auto possibly????