Alright - little update.

I just got off the phone with Scott at Relentless (my car is there getting re-tuned) and they're pretty sure it started to slip on the dyno. I also just got off the phone with SGP and they are also saying it sounds like the trans could be slipping. I guess my best bet is to take it to a transmission shop and get them to check it out.

Any other advice would be helpful.

 

Are they going to diagnose what is actually failing, it may be the clutchpack/bands inside the tranny that have gone bad and need to be upgraded. Your VB may be fine but the tranny internals have given way.

 

Thats what Mark at SGP said. The only thing is, the trans was completely fine before I did the VB upgrade. So I don't understand how it can go from 100% okay, to all of a sudden damaged if the valve body doesn't have something to do with it all.

 

Unfortunately you never know what the state of the clutchpacks are unless you open it up, sometimes they could be on their last legs but you never know until they finally let go.

Yours may have been close to that point when the VB was installed. Not saying the VB helped speed up the process but eventually it would have slipped.

 

Mark told me any good trans shop should be able to figure out the problem for like $40, so I'll take his advice and head over to a local shop sometime next week.

 

Have them take it to a shop while it's there! If I have to Walk home from SD, Imma kick your ***

 

Scott said he can try to take it somewhere tomorrow for me, but he's not sure. If not I'll take it to the shop Ty recommended, Dudley's here in Vegas.

 

Hope it works out for you.

 

Good luck. Hope it's not the clutch packs. I assume fluid, fluid level, etc looks good - did Scott take a sample to look at - really easy to drain a qt to examine.

 

Heat, that VB creates A LOT more.

 

^+1. Good point. Especially if you have a high stall torque converter also. Tell me you had a tranny cooler on there.

 

He's had a tranny cooler on there for a while before the VB. 8*11*1.5
No TC for him.

 

I was running one as well, it wasn't big enough. That one doesn't sound like it is either

 

^Oh geez, how big should he be running? Guess it's time to rip the m'fer apart again...

 

I disagree. I run a similar size B&M unit, rated 14,400 BTU, placed directly in the path of airflow (behind passenger side intercooler) and it keeps tranny temps in line. I have a temperature gauge placed on the outbound tranny line (before the cooler).

If the tranny fluid gets too hot, the 5AT should go into "limp mode", which would have been evident - I assume this did not happen.

Well at this point, it's all speculation till the tranny is apart. At least high performance rebuild kits exist now...

EDIT: let me add the caveat that I have only driven on the street and my boosted experience is minimal. I have talked to Ron (roncfpz) and he did run into problems with just one tranny cooler on the track (but I don't think he had his up front directly in the path of airflow) so he might be running two in parallel now - you could PM him if you think heat was the culprit...

 

If the cooler is too small, that concerns me because it's 40* here in Vegas now. What is going to happen at 120*?

 

I am running 1 cooler mounted behind the driver side air duct on the Do-Luck bumper. After 20 minutes of hard driving on the track running 16psi the trans went into limp mode. However, it was very hot and humid that day.......was about 94 degrees. Certainly at lower temps and turning off the boost controller would help alot. I've not had this issue on the street.

 

The VB increases line pressure and makes the shifts firmer and quicker. It's possible that it only exacerbated an existing problem with the clutches.

Also, as one begins to add larger or multiple coolers you begin to stress the trans fluid pump and decrease line pressure which "softens" the shifts again. It's important to get the right balance for the factory trans pump. It would be interesting to hear from SGP or GTM as to possible upgrades to the pump.

Good luck.

 

Though adding coolers in parallel should reduce flow resistance. The path with the least resistance will receive more fluid, but that's ok so long as both coolers work effectively.