Throttle Valve Cable Woes

[MrSchaeferPants]

So took it to a shop today, what they thought sorta verified what I thought, a stuck throttle valve. They can't get it today so I'm bringing it back tomorrow morning for them to drop the pan. If it's just the valve plunger thing stuck then great, however why it might be stuck isn't good, clutch bits or metal shavings.. hope it's just sludge and gummy or what not. Either way I was going to drop the pan for a new gasket and fluid/filter anyway.

 

[4X4HIGH]

DON'T DRIVE IT. Hopefully you towed it to them. Driving it WILL destroy that trans.

 

[MrSchaeferPants]

DON'T DRIVE IT. Hopefully you towed it to them. Driving it WILL destroy that trans.

Yup, that's why my buddy has a trailer And this shop is 5 miles away. Boy does a K5 make his new truck squat. His new V6 Furd 1/2 ton doesn't like towing. Told him to hurry up and replace dead 5.9 in his 94 Ram 2500... he just looked me funny and said he'll get on that as soon as I donate 10 grand to his 'towing service'.

 

[MrSchaeferPants]

Said the valve body was stuck. Not the first valve thing where the tv cable goes but the second part. Wanted like $570 I could get 2-3 used 700r4s for that price. My buddy used to do transmissions before he joined the army, so I'ma see if he can walk me through doing some minor rebuild/fixing stuff I can get to with the pan off w/o dropping it. Suprisingly the pan was pretty darn clean.

 

[gonefishin]

i am not a transmission expert or anything but you can buy a tci constant pressure valve body for about 3 or 4 hundred i believe i was going to buy one for my 700r4 when i had it rebuilt but just went with a mild shift kit instead because i aint planning on keeping it for very much longer but if i had it to do over again i would have done the valve body and it isn't to hard to install and then you wouldn't have to worry about the tv cable adjustment at all and you would have good crisp shifts now that also depends on the condition of the clutches and stuff in your trans just go to the tci website good luck

 

[Greg Ducato]

i am not a transmission expert or anything but you can buy a tci constant pressure valve body for about 3 or 4 hundred i believe i was going to buy one for my 700r4 when i had it rebuilt but just went with a mild shift kit instead because i aint planning on keeping it for very much longer but if i had it to do over again i would have done the valve body and it isn't to hard to install and then you wouldn't have to worry about the tv cable adjustment at all and you would have good crisp shifts now that also depends on the condition of the clutches and stuff in your trans just go to the tci website good luck

The TCI Constant pressure valve body is a little more complicated than just a valve body swap, it requires changes to the valves in the pump, and servo changes as well. The misnomer is that you no longer need a tv cable, the fact is you still do and it will still need to be adjusted to get the best performance out of the trans. The real downside to the constant pressure VB is the the constant pressure is very high, just over 175psi even under light throttle, which can be hard on internal parts as well as driveline parts, and can swell to over 250psi under harder throttle.
A better solution would be to install a shift kit from a good comany like Superior or TransGo that addresses the TV sticking problem and has some other shift improvement and correction solutions.
There is no great mystery to adjusting a tv cable. The best set up will have about an inch and an eighth of total cable travel from idle to wide open, in a straight line pull, and at wide open throttle, the cable should be as tight as it can be without restricting throttle opening. If you have those aproximate parameters you are good to go.

 

[ryoken]

http://www.bowtieoverdrives.com/catalog/catalog_inc/viewitem.php?ITEMID=653

 

[Blue85]

If the valve is stuck, you can take the valve body out yourself and clean it. You just have to take care so you now how it all goes back. The real question, though, is why that valve is stuck. It could be a fluke thing and cleaning that valve will make it run again. Or you have bigger problems in there making debris...

Still - back to the original topic of why your cable won't self-adjust. If the cable never bottoms out on anything to self-adjust, you have one of two problems. Either the cable is too long or something is broken. If you pull the cable by hand does it snap back? Can you feel it bottom out inside the transmission?

The cable connects to a little rotating part inside the tranny case. I has a spring to pull the cable back. That could be broken, or the cable, or the valve.

 

[Blue85]

 

[MrSchaeferPants]

Still waiting for some time to take it apart. I can feel the spring pulling it back. I hope to get to it this weekend, or perhaps I'll buy a shift kit first, so when I drop the pan and poke around in there and clean, I'll already have the kit.