$400? Where are you shopping at, I'll take 3 at that price. Not happinging around here .If there's any NV4500 in a yard, it's $750 min, with many unknowns.
No, you cannot buy an NV4500 outright for $1500. It's more like $2000 when you include a core, my "core" was shot. I got all my parts for $1100, included the stupid special $25/qt oil. It's close, your not off base, but I kinda wanted to do it myself because I've never done one. Most main internals were gone, most places who deal with these start at $1250 plus a $350-700 core, plus shipping, plus oil. The local shops I called when I described what the damage wanted $2100-$2800 to bench build it. But parts availability and general goofyness of this trans is silly.
I was thinking of putting one in my K5, not anymore. Oh, you towed something bigger than a jet ski with it in 5th, i'm sorry, it wasn't designed for that. Oh, you had a leak and used 1qt of 75w oil because there was no finding the goofa$$ stupid special oil required and didn't feel like spending 3 nights extra camping in a parking lot while you wait to order it, I'm sorry, your syncros are now junk, oh when the syncros went, the kevlar they are made of, the pieces of which floating around in there just wrecked half of the hard parts in your trans.
You can find parts for the SM465 because it doesn't require special oil to go with the special metals (like those found inside the NV4500). China parts, which most of the SM465 parts you find today are as well, still do well bathed in regular 80w90oil in the Sm465. You don't find the super tight tolerances in the SM465 like you do in this thing. Put a china input shaft on your NV4500 is like rolling the dice. PLus there are 20times the SM465's in existance than NV4500's. In the 90's, when these things were primarily sold, manuals were heavily discouraged, and now in the 2000's, they are becoming extinct. GM already did away with them in trucks, Ford announced the end of manuals in F150's. Don't be surprised to see them go in the superduty's as well. Alot of shops around here don't even touch them because they are so rare these days.
My image of the NV4500 as the holy grail of manual transmissions is gone. THe OEM's tried too hard to make it shift like car and in doing that, have too many goofy aspects not found on transmissions from our era. It's a damn truck, it doesn't need to shift and sound like a corvette. More evidence of that stupidity is found in their experimentation with dual-mass flywheels. They had them on the GM400 series, couldn't amke it work, in 96, switched back to solid flywheel. When they introduced the GMT800's with a diesel in the early 2000's, they tried again the dual-mass flywheel. After warranting a good percentage of them, they started putting solid flywheels back on them. Why, do you ask they tried again with the dual mass BS after already failing at it, because they wanted it to act a little more like car, less vibes, a little easier and smoother shift. THey don't get it, it's truck, not a car. I'm so sick of these stupid soccer moms in their part time engineering job, oh, well, these need to shift smoother, tell the supplier to make some changes. It's a friken truck people, it's allowed to act like one! Well, the soccer moms working at GM got their way with the GMT900's, no more manuals, which is really a sad state of affairs.
The dodge folks have so many troubles with this trans because the cummins beats the pee out of it, cracked cases, can't keep a 5th gear on to save their lives, some guys drill the 5th gear clean thru the shaft and gear and put a roll pin thru it it's fallen off so many times, they just get sick of it. As soon as they touch thier injection pump to put out just a but more, troubles arise in the NV4500.
The SM465 in my K5 stays put. This POS is going back in my K2500 where it came from, and after this winter, if that trans lasts that long because the parts I have, some are from unknown origin, if it last that long, I will probably sell that truck.
This trans failed because of a failed pilot bearing, which caused the front input bearing to fail, with zero warning, not hard shifting as many people have tried to tell me would be a symtom of a bad pilot, no whining prior to the failure. All of sudden, a high pitched whine, and kaboom, and I'm sitting on the side of the road where this trans is not supposed to leave people, and lucky to be there only thru shear luck of available side of road and nothing in the way to get there within the few hundred feet of coast down I had, I could have been left in the middle of the road (with a trailer of goods mind you). I've tore out countless SM465's with near non-existant pilots. No sign of input bearing wear on those trans. When I rebuilt the engine in my C10, the 3sp saginaw tranny in there had a wrecked pilot, the input shaft where it mated the pilot was all tore up, the input bearing was perfect. I put a new shaft on, but that input bearing remains (50k mi since re-installation and still running), the tranny shop I checked with said, why bother, he'd never even heard of one of those 3sp saginaw's failing.
Anyhow, my rant is done. I will finish this job, mabey I will become less bitter about it once it's in and working right. I like doing things myself, but not when parts are expensive, very expensive, hard to find, and take days and weeks to get in.
No, you cannot buy an NV4500 outright for $1500. It's more like $2000 when you include a core, my "core" was shot. I got all my parts for $1100, included the stupid special $25/qt oil. It's close, your not off base, but I kinda wanted to do it myself because I've never done one. Most main internals were gone, most places who deal with these start at $1250 plus a $350-700 core, plus shipping, plus oil. The local shops I called when I described what the damage wanted $2100-$2800 to bench build it. But parts availability and general goofyness of this trans is silly.
I was thinking of putting one in my K5, not anymore. Oh, you towed something bigger than a jet ski with it in 5th, i'm sorry, it wasn't designed for that. Oh, you had a leak and used 1qt of 75w oil because there was no finding the goofa$$ stupid special oil required and didn't feel like spending 3 nights extra camping in a parking lot while you wait to order it, I'm sorry, your syncros are now junk, oh when the syncros went, the kevlar they are made of, the pieces of which floating around in there just wrecked half of the hard parts in your trans.
You can find parts for the SM465 because it doesn't require special oil to go with the special metals (like those found inside the NV4500). China parts, which most of the SM465 parts you find today are as well, still do well bathed in regular 80w90oil in the Sm465. You don't find the super tight tolerances in the SM465 like you do in this thing. Put a china input shaft on your NV4500 is like rolling the dice. PLus there are 20times the SM465's in existance than NV4500's. In the 90's, when these things were primarily sold, manuals were heavily discouraged, and now in the 2000's, they are becoming extinct. GM already did away with them in trucks, Ford announced the end of manuals in F150's. Don't be surprised to see them go in the superduty's as well. Alot of shops around here don't even touch them because they are so rare these days.
My image of the NV4500 as the holy grail of manual transmissions is gone. THe OEM's tried too hard to make it shift like car and in doing that, have too many goofy aspects not found on transmissions from our era. It's a damn truck, it doesn't need to shift and sound like a corvette. More evidence of that stupidity is found in their experimentation with dual-mass flywheels. They had them on the GM400 series, couldn't amke it work, in 96, switched back to solid flywheel. When they introduced the GMT800's with a diesel in the early 2000's, they tried again the dual-mass flywheel. After warranting a good percentage of them, they started putting solid flywheels back on them. Why, do you ask they tried again with the dual mass BS after already failing at it, because they wanted it to act a little more like car, less vibes, a little easier and smoother shift. THey don't get it, it's truck, not a car. I'm so sick of these stupid soccer moms in their part time engineering job, oh, well, these need to shift smoother, tell the supplier to make some changes. It's a friken truck people, it's allowed to act like one! Well, the soccer moms working at GM got their way with the GMT900's, no more manuals, which is really a sad state of affairs.
The dodge folks have so many troubles with this trans because the cummins beats the pee out of it, cracked cases, can't keep a 5th gear on to save their lives, some guys drill the 5th gear clean thru the shaft and gear and put a roll pin thru it it's fallen off so many times, they just get sick of it. As soon as they touch thier injection pump to put out just a but more, troubles arise in the NV4500.
The SM465 in my K5 stays put. This POS is going back in my K2500 where it came from, and after this winter, if that trans lasts that long because the parts I have, some are from unknown origin, if it last that long, I will probably sell that truck.
This trans failed because of a failed pilot bearing, which caused the front input bearing to fail, with zero warning, not hard shifting as many people have tried to tell me would be a symtom of a bad pilot, no whining prior to the failure. All of sudden, a high pitched whine, and kaboom, and I'm sitting on the side of the road where this trans is not supposed to leave people, and lucky to be there only thru shear luck of available side of road and nothing in the way to get there within the few hundred feet of coast down I had, I could have been left in the middle of the road (with a trailer of goods mind you). I've tore out countless SM465's with near non-existant pilots. No sign of input bearing wear on those trans. When I rebuilt the engine in my C10, the 3sp saginaw tranny in there had a wrecked pilot, the input shaft where it mated the pilot was all tore up, the input bearing was perfect. I put a new shaft on, but that input bearing remains (50k mi since re-installation and still running), the tranny shop I checked with said, why bother, he'd never even heard of one of those 3sp saginaw's failing.
Anyhow, my rant is done. I will finish this job, mabey I will become less bitter about it once it's in and working right. I like doing things myself, but not when parts are expensive, very expensive, hard to find, and take days and weeks to get in.
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I run it for about 10 miles, and it seemd to do fine. Seems much tighter and less noise that before, but perhaps that just my imagination.
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