Need help with my AOD build up

[Capri306]

Check out Baumann Engineering. They have a TON of info online for free, and helped me to build my AOD that has stood up to 7 months of street racing, highway driving, city traffic, brake stands, you name it. You listed some of the most important things though, including a tranny cooler (get the BIGGEST one you can fit!) and a shift kit, but you forgot a VERY important piece to making an AOD live: that stupid little nylon grommet on the throttle body needs to be replaced!!! I tell ya, that thing fries more AOD's than you'd believe. The reason is that TV pressure is dictated by the TV cable (makes sense, huh?), and if the grommet is loose, TV pressure will be lower than it's supposed to be, therefore resulting in sloppy, nasty, slushy, heat-producing shifts.

On the subject of converters, STAY AWAY FROM TCI. They're the reason I had to rebuild my AOD. Know what happened? The splines stripped out of the converter!!! The input shaft (the larger one) wasn't hurt at all, making me believe that the TCI is made of basically pot metal. One night I was making a normal right turn, and I heard a *POP!* and she would move no more. I thought I broke an axle or dropped my driveshaft, but after hearing a buzzing/whirring sound from the rear engine area, I knew something in the tranny was up. I didn't find out the torque converter splines were bad until I had the whole thing reassembled and back in, only to find it did the same thing. After more careful inspection, I found the problem. I talked with about 3 or 4 transmission service guys, and none of them had ever seen anything like it before. "Guess you got a bad one," was the most common remark. BS, I've been burned by TCI before; I installed a TransCat kit into a C4 years before, and it NEVER worked correctly. I removed it, installed a B&M kit, and never had any more problems.

Wouldn't worry too much about the 2" OD band, I found out the hard way it's an expensive conversion. If a PI converter is out of the budget, you're going to have to drop this as well. You will love the A servo, and besides, it's only used in OD, so it doesn't need to hold all THAT much power, right?