[Blackbirdws6]

Figured it would be a good time for an update. After the car was tuned on the dyno and fun was had at the LTxTech dyno day, I took the car for its first maiden voyage. The top was down, sun shining and everything sounded great. I decided to downshift to fourth on the highway and give her a good WOT hit. AFR looked great, she pulled really hard and I had a big smile on my face. I took the next exit so I could head the other way towards home. There is a nice on ramp to get on the highway so this time I figured I would see how she feels in third. I rolled into the throttle and man did she rip. I went for a quick shift into 4th and it wasn't going into gear (grinding badly). I tried for a different gear and wasn't getting it to go in anywhere. I pulled over to the side of the road. The trans didn't want to go into any of the gears but after a few minutes, I could finally select all of the gears. I started her up and got it home but the trans was hurt.

Upshifting through the gears felt OK except for the 3-4. It now grinds every time at any speed. It will go into 4th but would again, grind every time. I was also not able to downshift to 2nd or to 4th at any speed. I thought perhaps maybe my clutch hydraulics were not allowing the clutch to disengage properly. I had a new, USA made slave on the shelf so I decided to put that in even though I was confident the clutch was disengaging properly (pedal feel was very good and engagement occurs in the upper part of the pedal travel). I took it for another ride and same issue. I also was hearing some not so fun noises here and there too so I decided to just take it back home.

Mind you this trans is a Level 3 tick unit so I was a bit surprised this issue occurred. I called them up and they really didn't have an idea what the issue could be. They were also not looking to do me any favors with a rebuild either. I get their position but it prompted me to look elsewhere. I contacted Hanlon Motorsports located in eastern PA not far from Pottstown for his input. He had a bit more to say but like anything else, it needs to come apart to determine what's wrong. I drove the trans to him and his comments were as follows.

- Input and mainshaft bearings were shot which put the brunt of the issue on the blocker rings causing them to fail.
- 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear didn't look wonderful.
- Countershaft cluster didn't look good
- Generally all of the gears in the front of the trans showed a lot of wear associated with heat.

The heat in the front of the trans was likely due to fluid running to the back of the trans during hard acceleration. So the rebuild was started and we replaced all of the questionable/bad parts with new OEM. Getting these was a big challenge as Tremec is not producing a lot of parts at the moment. Many parts are backordered, etc. Through our efforts, we were able to track down all of the parts in a rather timely fashion. Aftermarket parts are out there and available however none of the folks I spoke with are comfortable using any of them for a performance build.

To avoid the heat issue and keep the trans happy, Hanlon installed a fitting in the front of the trans to feed fluid to the front end. They sell a pump, cooler and filter setup to make this all work nicely. I will need to figure out placement, plumbing and wiring. The benefits are obviously keeping fluid on the front end of the trans but it also will avoid foaming of the fluid maintaining its protection abilities.

I got the trans back this week and it is back in the car. There are a number of items I need to button up and I will need to figure out the placement of the fluid pump setup. My plan is to engage the pump off of my Hobbs switch which controls the 2nd fuel pump. No need to run the pump when I'm just driving around normally. I will take pics of the setup.

I also bought new wheels/tires for the car 2 days before the trans had the issue. I will debut those items when all is well with the car.