Posted by Alex J [172.70.131.136] on Wednesday, August 31, 2022 at 09:31:50 :
I've finally been getting back to work on this old thing. Had a lot of life changes, including job change, divorce, selling my home and sleeping in a friend's living room for a bit... you know, all those normal mid-life things. Crisis it was not, because I was making these changes happen for the sake of a better life. During that time, this truck and all my tools and materials were in a shipping container and storage units.
Now that I am in my new home and workspace, I can finally get back to it. From Day 1 I was plauged with transmission issues. The drivetrain is a Cummins ISB170 3.9 4cyl common rail Turbo Diesel with an Allison 1000 5 speed. They came from an auto recycler,,but unfortunately when they shipped me the components, they provided me a trashed converter and the wrong TCM. I didn't know this until years later when finally getting the truck running. The first transmission made it 250 miles before eating itself. I found a "friend of a friend" who worked for the local Cummins, Detroit, Allison OTD truck shop who offered to rebuild it for cheap if I bought hard parts. Well, turns out he replaced a few easy to get to and visible gaskets on the outside and that was it. I installed the transmission back in the truck and it was making the same noises with the same problems and then the guy vanished. I pulled that transmission out and found a used unit with 250k miles on it for $300. Installed that and put 2k miles on it with no problems, just tired and sticky shifts from the E-valve problem these older ones have.
Fast forward to this past July. I trade another WC53 I have for a custom built, all upgrades, billet goodies, WARRANTIED, Allison 1000. Its out of a Kodiak 4500 and in the process I wanted to tweak some driveline angles and install some LORD hydraulic engine mounts. I've completed all of those changes, and have the body back on the truck. I'm hoping to have the thing back together for a test drive this weekend. Fingers crossed that this transmission shifts awesome and that its the end of those problems.
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