Ever since adding the blower to my car I've had pretty much nothing but bad luck. To top it off, tonight I think I've blown my tranny. It seems to slip/shudder after 3,000 rpm, but otherwise revs smoothly before this point.

This car is costing me an arm and a leg, literally.

Depressing

 

Unfortunately that is the problem with the automatics, they are just not built to take the extra torque (not that the 5spd handles it much better). Nissan used the same auto tranny for a few different vehicles, and they all seemed to have comfort in mind over performance.

 

man, time to do a 5speed swap.....LSD if you can get your hands on it. I don't know why nissan trannys or gearboxes cant take abuse or power. These things really seem to be made of glass

 

Do a 5spd swap, than when possible buy the new 1st-4th set from PAR and u'll never have another problem with the tran again!

PAR Helical or Straight cut full billet 1st-4th with input shaft set for the Nissan Maxima!!!!

no more gtir gears needed, for our weak 5spds!

New set being designed as we speak! should be ready by May1st 08'

New 1st-4th par Helical or Straight cut gear set with billet gears made to be extra durable for all us maxima lovers who hate our weak 5spd and would love a bulletproof no worry system PAR is going to manufacture a new set for the Nissan maxima at a great price! I'm sure that many of you want a bullet proof 5spd made for your car just like i've always wanted, not like the gtir gear set were its incomplete... and only 3rd and 4th can be replaced, this set that they are making will be complete full functioning and worry free set!

Basically I've shipped my transmission over there to be copied last week and its being made to take the most power possible with durable efficient teeth and shafts, when its finished I will post pictures and prices and let everyone know how to get one! I'll give full report with dyno and pictures, full audio and video for all to see!!

So far what I've seen from PAR gears are a large tooth profile throughout all gears! they maintain a perfect look and design with decreasing the number of teeth wile increasing the size and strength of each tooth.

This means great news for those of us who want to let loose with our maximas and never worry about our one big flaw our s.h.i.t.y 5spd that has 3rd and 4th that love to shed there teeth and 1st and 2nd that like to crack cause of deadly power made by our VQ's and our take offs and some uncalled for wheel hop too!

-so for those that love to really take off and want a bulletproof 5spd with a helical cut style of teeth to reduce noise and increase strength, that is what I've always dreamed of, and now that they are going to make an entire set for us its really worth it specially with the specialist and high end materials Par is known for!

They r also going to be using needle bearings rather than the metal on metal ride that our 5spd is normally made with! Needle rollers r far superior in design and sadly our gear boxes weren't designed very well so our gears ride directly on the shaft with just a fine layer of oil film in between and what happens a lot of the time is the film wears down and the friction causes damage to the shaft! With needle rollers they never touch the shaft, just ride nice and smooth along the bearings!!

I suggest you save up and do the 5spd swap with the helical PAR 1st-4th set and never worry again!!

1st-4th Par set is available in straight cut as well but beware the sound is extremely loud!! set is going to be avilable for ~4000$AUD

Can't wait to get the set they are making for the Maxima I'm going to be so much more comfortable driving my car knowing that my 5spd isn't just going to fall to pieces like its done two times before!

I'm so exited!

 

How much power are (were) you putting down? im at 300+whp/tq on my auto of 160k miles and its still strong. did you have drop resistor mod and synthetic ATF in there?

 

Yeah, I had DR Mod. That was pretty much how I blew it up actually. Before then, I wasnt pushing it though gears because I knew it was bad. I rigged up the DR mod and decided i'd take it through 1st - 2nd. It took it well a few times, then all of a sudden I went 1 - 2 and it started shuddering. It has a decent tranny cooler on it as well, so I'm a bit at a loss to why its crapped out. The car is old though - 200,000 km's. Might have something to do with it.

I am running 11 psi with stock exhaust. So I don't know what power figures i'm putting out. It feels pretty quick, but I'm sure it's not as much as you guys with a good exhaust system.

 

A transmission cooler helps to extend the overall life of the transmission, but my personal opinion is that it does not help a whole lot when you are boosting between shifts. The reason? The transmission fluid heats up extremely fast whenever the clutches are slipping, like they are when the car shifts. Put a high load on that, and you can cause the fluid to break down very quickly. This is just my opinion, I don't have any hard data to back it up with. Some 4th gen auto tranny's seem to last a long time, while others don't make it past 60k miles. Could it be Nissans great quality control in the transmissions?

 

could very well be :P

 

For what it's worth - the Shift_Fast mods used by a few - including me - bypass the TCU and control the shift solenoids directly, so shifts are quick and positive. It seems that the TCU is designed to give smooth shifts by modulating the voltages going to the shift solenoids - the voltage to each solenoid changes relatively slowly, burning clutches. If you shift up by using just battery voltage on the solenoids, the shifts are quick and very positive - I usually squealed my M&Hs going into third gear on my VLSD while spraying a 150-shot nitrous load - and that transmission is holding up nicely under my new 3.5.... Although today I did install two tranny coolers in parallel, to get ready for spraying the 3.5. Two stages again...

I'm convinced that the TCU is the problem for most folk that burn up an automatic. The Shift_Fast mods go around that problem. Check with Jime - he knows a bunch about the automatic.

 

Thanks for the heads up grey99max. I had a transgo shift kit I was about to install. I thought this would have been the only thing I would have needed to do? I'll do some searches on the shift_fast mod. Cheers

 

Shift_fast ??

Url Link Please..

 

Took me 30 seconds to find using the search.

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=332723
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=374926
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=208756

 

I seriously doubt the DR is what caused the tranny to fail. Most likely it was already weak since you didnt have the dr mod done before. I suggest on your next tranny, put in mobil 1 atf or amsoil atf, put a bigger cooler or same one u already have, do the drop resistor mod on a WOT switch to go off at about 50 - 60% throttle. Iv been beating on my auto for a few years now, n/a, with nitrous, with nitrous and turbo, and now just turbo, and the auto is still very strong, and all that time has been with that combination, synthetic atf, cooler, dr. I tried not using the dr mod one day, as soon as the car shifted, it slipped so much that i had to let off otherwise i would have blown it, so DR FOR LIFE!!!! lol and stop thinking that the dr mod is wat caused it to break thats a misconception.

 

Everyone keeps trying to convince me to 5 spd, but then posts liek this keep me staying auto ..so im gonna stay auto and see what happens.

 

That just means the DR mod is just covering up the fact that the tranny is slipping.

 

Dont post unless your posting something useful f00l. Im just showing the fact that stock without dr on our car it will slip under higher power.

 

Sandy much? Sheesh...





yea yea yea...

 

I'll be keeping with the auto. I like autos, always have, always will.

I'll get it fixed and do the VB mod rather than the DR. I have a transgo shift kit I will put in, plus I think i'll yet again go for an even bigger tranny cooler.

I'll sort it out and go from there.

Streetzlegend: You're right. I knew if I was going to run 11 psi i'd need to go light on the tranny. I had no DR mod for quite some time, and regardless of this, I still let it go up to 4k through gears. I wanted to see what it was like to accelerate through 1 - 2, so I did the DR mod. Didn't last much longer after that. So, yes. I probably did weaken it beforehand. It was only a matter of time.

 

The DR mod does just one thing - it raises the internal pressure by taking all power off the pressure bypass solenoid in the tranny. The higher pressure lets the tranny shift better with higher power applied. It does Not affect how the TCU manages shifts - the solenoid voltages are still coming out as more gradual voltage changes, which still modulates the shifts. This is Not A Good Thing with power levels raised far above stock levels.

The Shift_Fast concept turns the A and B solenoids off and on very quickly, which shifts gears hard and fast, with little slippage. Since I was spraying a combined 150-shot at the time, I also wired my Shift_Fast to cut the second-stage nitrous at shift RPM - the tranny really liked the momentary relief in applied power, and shifted very fast. I'm going to experiment with that idea with the 3.5 - momentarily cutting power adder at shift time. You can also interrupt the coil voltage or injector voltage and also cause a blip in the engine, which should let the car shift easier. Kinda like pushing in the clutch. We shall see...

 

I've got to agree with most of what was said here. I do not believe that the auto trans is "weak." Most people just burn it up as has been already stated, by allowing the slippage to occur. A mod like the shiftfast mod that keeps slippage to a minimum is an auto transmission's best friend. the shift solenoids were designed to keep grandma comfortable while driving her maxima to church, not to provide long life to the trans under racing conditions with vastly increased power levels (and the associated vastly increased heat levels when all this slipping is occurring).

Jime and gray are subjecting their autos to more abuse than anyone else on this board and they aren't burning them up - take a page from their book. If you want to keep your auto, take the appropriate steps to make it last.

 

Yea, the shift_fast idea does make it shift faster and firmer as I messed around with the idea right after you and jime did . i had other problems with the car and removd all the wiring, eventually I will wire up my shift_fast again. But even then, the dr mod alone is a savior to our auto's. I too have somewhat of a momentarily cut off of power adder, I have my wastegate to open up right before shift to drop the boost then closes back up to my set boost, result less power being delivered during the shift.

jordandalley:
you said you were taking the car upto 4k and going thru the gears? that right there is exacly what killed your auto my friend. Part throttle shifts under boost or higher power than stock = almost instant burn up of the auto.. I NEVER go through the gears part throttle during boost, i let off slightly between every shift so that it goes to the next gear instantly. but if you leave your pedal set and let it go to 4k or anything below WOT, and goes thru the gears like that, ur done. Reason being is because line pressure is even lower at part throttle, so if ur putting out more power than normal with very low line pressure, then its going to be slip city.

 

Whoops. My bad. Expensive mistake on my behalf, but fixable i'm sure.

I notice you all have taken an electronic approach to fixing the shifts in the auto. But is a VB mod just as effective?

 

My opinion, shift_fast + dr mod > vb mod

 

What he said. The DR mod boosts the internal pressure, the direct control of the two shift solenoids with voltage means the shifts are hard and fast, when you want them, and you can control the torque converter lockup directly if you choose to.

I went out last night to run the highways - to test the TQ lockup on the 3.5 - and found that I could engage the TQ clutch while under full power in second gear. The RPM drop is not drastic, but it's there, and a chassis dyno with and without might prove something.

This engine just explodes at 4K RPMs, all the way to redline, and I can shift manually (with a switch) just before redline and the tranny shifts immediately and holds the power. Launching (on street BFGs) spins 'em of course, but as you open the throttle and the engine hits 4K, the tires break loose again - big time. This setup is peaky.

 

in 2nd gear you might notice a difference between locking and not locking the TC, how ever in 3rd gear you wont notice the difference. Reason being is that with OD off the TC locks up automatically in 3rd, i dyno tested it, and both same results.

 

Remember, I'm switching everything manually - the TCU doesn't do anything except compute vehicle speed this way - and complain because it can't shift the transmission...

I can feel the difference in every gear - just haven't measured the RPM drops yet. The Edge 2800-stall TQ has carbon clutches and locks fast and hard - I was surprised when it immediately locked under full throttle in 2nd gear. I was thinking I might use it to extend first gear by locking the TQ about 6000 before shifting at 6500 into second. Dunno yet. Looks like a Test-n-Tune this Thursday nite at Heartland - maybe I can get in a couple of NA passes ...

 

So how instant are these Shift_Fast shifts in comparison to just the DR mod?

When I did the DR mod, I still seemed to notice a bit of slippage between gears.

 

I was just thinking the same thing.

 

I use the DR mod AND the Shift_Fast mods together. This way, there is no slippage when shifting. I did spin the M&H slicks when hitting 3rd gear, at the track. Shifts are bang, bang, bang.

For normal driving, I don't use either one - no point in beating up your tranny for no reason.

 

Well yea, under a good amount of power you will notice some kind of slip or what seems or feels like slippage. With the shiftfast, you will have quicker shifts than dr alone. now if u feel slip with dr mod imagine without . which is why you NEVER floor it unless you have dr mod done.

 

Currently with the DR and using the Suprastick and stock TCM totally disconnected all 1-2 shifts produce as squeal regardless of throttle opening, 2-3 depends on tires and throttle opening, regardless removing slippage is king.

 

just thought I would come back to this and say that since I have been doing a little driving in my car, my tranny issue seems to be intermittent. I drove it for about half an hour with no troubles at all. Then the next day it was back do doing this weird issue.

The issue is if I go WOT, it hits about 3,500rpm and then starts slipping (i think) and doesnt like to rev past that point. I'd describe the feeling as a kind of shuddering. If I don't go WOT, it feels like its slipping only slightly, but does enable me to rev a little higher.

I have checked the transmission fluid and the level seems fine. The colour of the fluid is a light pink, not bright red like I would have expected - but otherwise it seems clean. It does have a slight smell to it, but I wouldnt describe it as a burning smell.

Any ideas what this problem could be? Anyone had similar symptoms after thrashing their auto with 11 pounds of boost?

 

I think once you slip the auto once, even more during boost, its done for good. i think you may have to just start looking for another auto.

 

if i need a new transmission i'll just get a manual I think...

 

Did you git 'er fixed Jordan?

Get married yet?

 

Yeah, got married on June 14! A while ago now. Will get my Maxima back this week after having the following done:

1) Fix boost leak
2) Fix oil leak around timing chain case
3) Water pump replacement
4) New bearings and seals in Blower
5) New thermostat housing gasket
6) Brake pedal adjustment (too much play)
7) Modification of V1 plate so belt doesnt rub

The bill???? Probably massive.. but who cares.. I get to have my baby back.

Oh... and the transmission problem I thought I had was a boost leak I feel pretty stupid for that.

Never the less, I'm hoping to get that shift kit (VB mod) done soon as well. Then I will be rockin'