I just watched a master technician disassemble my transmission in less than 10 minutes. Overdrive clutches were completely gone. He said the valve body kit that I had installed was the main problem. So anybody interested in the Troyer Valve Body kit for the 4R70W beware. Per the instructions, it says to discard the springs for the 2-3 accumulator and bend the tabs on the cap to hold it back in place inside it's bore. Apparently this will make your transmission shift harder, but the cap is constantly beating against the valve body and will eventually crack it. I'm really disappointed. I thought for $300 I'd be getting a good quality product. Well, I guess now since I'm having the transmission rebuilt properly, I will have a good product...

 

you probably mean the Direct clutches, those are common to fail in this model transmission. Overdrive (4th Gear) is controlled by the Overdrive band.

It is fairly common for people to remove the 2-3 accumulator spring for a firmer shift, but I usually don't recommend it.

I have never heard of Troyer performance and I don't see any listing on their website for a valve body or shift kit.

 

You are much better off changing the shift quality with a custom tune rather than with internal mods.

 

Troyer Performance is very well known on the boards, excellent programmer, but with a LONG wait for tunes. A few years ago they offered a complete trans valve body replacement for this trans. I had one in my 07 and had 5 flawless years with it, guess by the looks on the site they are no longer available.

 

hopefully the valve body had a custom tune to adjust for it....

 

All the valve body did was to firm up all the shift points...still adjustable through the tuner, but no special tuning needed for the VB itself

 

no you're not, because cranking up the pressure is a BS way to firm the shifts and leads to pump failure...



I've had a valve body in my green truck for YEARS without issue



now I'm curious as to what seperator plate the OP was using, as troyer sold a few of 'em none of which were "troyer" the most common was the transgo and it was known to cause the same issues the OP experienced

 

I've always been under the impression that a tune was needed with a VB

 

no, no tune needed for a valve body / seperator plate install

 

Not entirely true. most things done improperly will cause problems. raising the shift points and fluid pressure at the wrong time will cause problems.

drilling some larger holes in the separator will increase shift firmness and help prevent internal slippage. These instructions are from the Ford engineer that help design the 4R70W transmission.

Hole #2 is the intermediate clutch feed (1-2 shift). Make this hole in the .100"-.110" range. It should be .081" in your plate right now.

Hole #10 is the reverse clutch feed. Totally optional. If you want it to engage into reverse faster when you move the lever, open this up to .093".

Holes #4 & 5 are the direct clutch feed (2-3 shift). Open both of these holes up to .100"-.110".

Holes #9 and 11 are the forward clutch feed (4-3/4-2 shift). Make both of these .100-.110" as well.

So, it looks like you need a drill of around .100" and you should be good. When you open up holes 4&5 make sure the hole in the gasket between the separator plate and valve body casting, is large enough. These holes are a little small.

- Jerry




My personal experience is making Hole #2 larger than .100" creates a pretty harsh 1-2 shift, especially at more than 1/2 throttle. usually you can compensate for this by installing different 1-2 accumulator springs or adjusting your shift pressure with the hand held turner, it that is possible.

 

Bingo... *Never ... EVER* install a Trans Go shift kit in an AODE/4R70W/4R75E transmission.

More information from our Ford Engineer "Jerry"

Having helped design and worked on the trans that's in your car/truck and being the Jerry of the Jerry Mod, TransGo=bad. Here is why.

Once upon a time, oh 10 years or so ago, a higher up at the Blue Oval mandated to us that we make the transmission shift out of manual low gear into 2nd even if you didn't move the shifter. Kicking and screaming we complied. Starting in the late 90's we were able to change this back due to early retirement packages.

Along comes TransGo trying to be hero. They are going to change a whole bunch of stuff in the valve body to prevent the trans shifing out of manual low. All the shift valves get replaced, the solenoid pressure regulator valve, the manual valve, etc. All of this is done in an attempt to prevent it from shifting out of manual low and a few things like that. They are trying to take the control away from the EEC and put it in the trans. If you want to do this, buy a manual valvebody and be done with it.

Here's the problem.

TransGo doesn't realize there are things called production tolerances and stack ups. About one in every 20 TransGo kits won't shift. I have talked to some people on this board that have had this problem. Why doesn't it shift? They cannot account for all the variances in the valve body when trying to do something mechanically that should be done electronically. This is bad, very, very bad. A 5% failure rate is out of control. How lucky do you feel?

Next issue with TransGo. They put a TV pressure blow off valve in the valve body right under the main regulator valve in the cover plate on the bottom of the trans. They claim this is to prevent TV pressure spikes which occur in the trans. I bet I have personally done the post morteums on 500 trans's and looked over a few thousand others. I have taken more pressure data than can be imagined. Guess what? I have NEVER seen an excessive TV pressure spike, ever. The main reason I think they did this is because again, they are trying to change something that should be changed electronically. They change the main regulator valve spring to have a "flatter" line pressure curve based on TV pressure. The problem with changing that spring, you make so much line pressure that you will explode the clutch cylinders. So they add this blow off valve to keep TV pressure to some set limit. Two issues here. One, this should be done electronically by asking for more pressure (there are reasons why this is bad, but I'll get to that later) and not trying to override the electronics. Two, if you ever take the pan off of a trans, even one that functions well, you'll see friction material in the pan, totally normal. What happens when one of these little pieces of material lodge in the blow off valve and have it bleeding off because it doesn't seat? I can answer that, you get your trans rebuilt.

While this may be enough to convince you, I'll give you one more.

Anyone out there with a transgo kit notice that when you are in 1st gear and mash it, about half way through low gear the car seems to really take off (this would be mainly on blower cars, not N/A cars), almost like a turbo kicking in? Ever wonder what this is? It's the freaking trans slipping from the shift kit.

There is a circuit in the valve body to feed the torque converter. Under certain conditions, high pressure demand, lower RPM (<3000) the production valve body will reduce the flow to the converter circuit to keep pressure to the clutches. TransGo gets rid of this nice feature. So you feed the converter circuit full bore all the time. While this is great if you have enough pump flow, but you don't until you really get the pump spinning. So what happens? The line pressure, hence the pressure to the clutches, drops and is not what it should be. In fact, in many cases it drops enough to make the forward clutch slip.
- Jerry Wroblewski

*If you want improved shifts, do the Jerry Mod, or JMod*

 

Just like tarajerame adjust line pressure in the tune = no good to happen down the road. My son has found that out the hard way. As for VB's, there are only 2 people right now I trust with these transmissions sadly one does not offer anything for the 4R70W that most of us run. However the 4R100 he builds a nasty VB for it. The only complete safe way of getting firmer shifts is having someone that really understands the performance aspect of these transmissions.