I was reading about the Auto tranny trick and was wondering a few things:

1)How much does it hurt the tranny. Matt do you still have yours hooked to a switch? And how did it work?

2) Has anybody ever tried to use a different resistor so that it would still shift hard but not as bad for the tranny.

If this has been discussed before pls dont flame me its late.

 

I have no idea about what you're talking about, but I just wanna say that your car looks sweet, love the rims!

 

Matt wrecked that 93GXE auto a LONG time ago. He now has a red 93SE 5spd

some 4th gen guys (mzmtg in particular) have used a variable resistor (aka potentiometer) to control the tranny shifting; search for more info on that

most of the people I have heard of have put it back to stock because it shifted so rough

 

what exactly is the tranny trick?

 

On the pass. side strut tower, just next to your vaccum canister, there's a wire harness that has two wires. It leads to a 3" x .5" or so silver box that says JECS on it below your stock air box. Disconnect the harness. What you've done is disabled the transmission drop-down resistor. Now, when you shift, you'll have 100% line pressure and you'll see how fast the tranny will shift. However, do not leave it like that for an extended period of time.





Yup.. that was me.. since the temp dropped WAY low today (low 50s this morning), I unplugged it again and I could routinely chirp 2nd gear shifts and downshifts into 1st at 15+mph.

The drawback to this.. high speed driving will NOT work well. at above 95mph, the tranny line pressure builds up so much that the car will shift itself out of OD and back into 3rd. it will shift back and forth between 3rd and 4th gears from anywhere between 95 and 110. if you turn OD off and levae it in 3rd, the clutch band will start slipping above 105mph and the rpm will skyrocket and you won't go any faster- thus burning your clutch band to bits in no time at all.

 

Now, what about setting up a switch inside the cab so when you want it on, you can flip the switch, and if you're racing and you don't want the resistor, switch it off... Rather simple to implement and it'll only cost about $2...
How bad is it (With a tranny cooler) to run it like that when you do short, 1/4 mile races... Where you kick the switch on when you hit 3rd gear?

 

EDIT: What if you set up an inductive circuit that would increase the resistance as the fuel pressure increases, so as it approaches the dangerous levels, it'll automatically retard it back so it WILL continue up in speed without any adverse effects... In my limited understanding, it would be something similar to Dons' VB mod...
Toss in a tranny cooler and you'll be straight.

 

I would NOt recommend messing with that resistor. After playing with that thing for just a couple of weeks, my tranny began doing weird things and the "P" light on my power/comfort switch would blink every time I started the car...

if I remember right, it was 10 times, which indicated high line pressures... 2nd gear was just about gone in the car when I wrecked it- probably wouldn't have lasted more than another few months, even being nice to it- let alone beating on the car daily as I always did.

 

I was hoping to catch you in this, since you did try it
Thanx for the input... Hrmmm... I'm wondering what would need to be done to safely do it, and what pressures are within specs... Think it may be time to hit the books...
I have some gears spinning in my head for when I get my Max out of Fixup mode and into Mod mode... Which should be occuring within the month (Finally!)

 

The only way I would recommend doing this is to upgrade the valve body, whether through a shift kit of Don's VB services. anything other than that is just like fishing with dynamite..
yeah it works, but sooner or later, you're going to blow yourself up.