transmissions…waaahh!

Unfortunately I’ve been borrowing my Dad’s car since Christmas. I have to admit, during the chilly month of January, I was slightly thankful that I didn’t have to wake up 30-minutes early to go out and de-ice Stude’s windows with hot water. But all-in-all, I miss Stude alot.
The Stude’s transmission is mostly shot. How do I know this? First she was kinda slipping out of gear – I would try to step on it and instead of a power boost I would get a power let-down. Then she started to just have less power all together. Then she was having trouble shifting into high gear on the freeway. Last week when I drove her the 25 miles down to the shop, she doesn’t roll away from a red light too easily once she’s heated up.

Luckily, used transmission are affordable and very easy to come by for my engine. Unluckily, it’s taken me months to replace because I just didn’t have the dinero. She will be back up and running in time to head to Las Vegas for Viva in April (which I just registered for today…I’m so excited!)

Transmissions have been a confusing thing for me to understand. Rod and Custom being my magazine of choice, they’ve had some helpful (if not a little over my head) articles in the past number of months. I particularly found one on torque converters helpful, in the August 2008 issue (click here to be directed to the article.) Not that my issue is the torque converter per-se (a torque converter is kind of like a clutch for an automatic transmission)…but it’s a good read to understand a tough issue – bit by bit all different pieces of information begin to fit together inside the ol’ brain!

As I put in the “new” transmission on Stude, I’ll be walking ya’ll through the process and hopefully explaining a bit more as I go along.