Hi folks,
I have been doing some transmission troubleshooting by testing the critical vacuum components (I need to do more of this), but also adjusting the transmission thrust cable and the accelerator cable nut. A few weeks ago, I put in a K1 kit and it made a huge difference from 1st to 2nd. Now I've erroneously said that the K1 takes care of 1st to 2nd, but in fact, it takes care of 2 to 3. Now i can only say from the feel of the transmission, it did make the 1 to 2 shifting a helluva lot better. But according to specs, this is not the way the K1 is supposed to work (
its designed for the 2 to 3 shift)
Instructions are amazing and not too difficult to understand. See pic 1.
So I tried to do more adjustments with the thrust cable nut (some people call this the bowden cable nut) to adjust the shift points, but all it did was to make 1 really good, but all the other gears suffered. So I had a feeling that something was not quite right. So having had experience w/ the K1 kit, I decided to pony up $60 or so bucks to buy the Superior shift kit.
After draining the trans pan of all the fluids, I removed the pan and saw that I needed to remove the filter out of the way. I drained it and stuck the 3 screws in a gallon sized ziploc bag.
The K2 was just as easy to remove as the K1 accumulator. Of note, the K2 is directly on the opposite side of the K1, so its on the rear side of the valve body. See pic #2. I took out 3 of the 4 screws, pivoted the plate out of the way, and then removed the K2 Elmer Fudd slowly.
So what do I find? See picture #3. So what's wrong? The plastic ends are missing!!! Flat out G-O-N-E. I thought I mightve dropped it, but no, it cant be. Later I fished around for them, but to no avail.
So given that the springs have nothing to hold it together, it was using the wall of the metal plate and the inside of the accumulator to compress into. Since that would (theoretically) mean that it would take a fraction longer to start the compression effect, it would be akin to a softer spring. And in these shift kits softer springs = softer shifts. I am about 80% confident that my understanding is correct, but if not, please correct me in this thread.
So now I have to order the K2 accumulator from a parts seller
Man, I want to drive this thing again! But if there's a silver lining in this cloud, its knowing that my crappy 3 - 4 shifts were probably more due to the lost plastic ends. Nevertheless, I'm going to experiment with the springs and see what happens. I can only thing of positives at this point. Who knows, maybe once I get the shifting all dialed in, I can break 20 second 0 to 60 runs!
Bob