Quote Originally Posted by SnowTh1ef View Post
You.... broke a 4t80e.. c'mon man.
id reserve judgment on that. just from not changing the primary pump filter when he yanked it from the junkyard.

its pretty well known that filter being a pita to replace is the leading cause of failure...most people dont wanna pay 9 hours of labor to change their trans filter. its laughable that gm says its "recommended" replacement is at 100k.

howd that 100k maint interval dexcool workout? any of you ever leave your filter in yer trans for 100k?

im gonna go out on a limb here and figure they knew it was an issue, and instead of that filter being replaced at a 30 or 60k interval, its in there for far too long getting clogged up, and more clogged it gets, the better of a filter it is, so it clogs up exponentially faster. but hey its a maintenance item, and the trans will easily last till out of warranty, even starving for fluid (gotta love trans adaptives that hide potential problems from the owner! yay!)

i kept the TR's shattered trans going for a while after we shredded a tq converter by replacing the filter every 100 miles lol, every time id hear the cold start whine...

to be fair the 80e's ive pulled have all had grit and **** in the pan, the fill cap has a habit of collecting crap around the lip and when you yank the dipstick a surprising amount of crap can fall in, oil change joints don give a fuuuuck...

as for the external filter, it would help, i dont like the potential restriction on the trans cooler lines (doubt people would spend the $ for a bypass filter setup) but the simple fact is that when you buy a good used 80e for 150$, you spend 15$ for a new filter and install it, your good for 50k+

the only things that are an issue are the solenoid failures, and known issues that sonnax has fixes for, which are in the valvebody in the lower pan, much easier to get to than the 65e...

shoot though at least when you have the side cover off changing that filter... the 2-3 accum is staring at you, yank it out and shove some 5/16ths spacer nuts on the shaft.

i wouldnt say he found the true weak point of the 80e....he just found the common failure due to lack of filter service.

it'd be like saying the 3800 is weak as hell cause it blew up with leaking dissolved 100k+ mile LIM gaskets ****ting dex internally.

i still think it'd be a swell idea to have the pcm control it so you can at least record trans data...im not saying' im just sayin....