CJONE
Veteran Member
For the most part, I think you are correct.
My original trans was eaten by shavings and chunks coming out of the TC for sure. I could here the normal " shaking can of pea gravel" sound coming from it before I bought it (it was an early lease turn-in.) Knowing what the problem was and relaying that to the dealer resulted in me getting the extended warranty thrown into the deal (AFTER I negotiated the price.) The next trans lost two forward gears. The next one lost ALL forward gears, but reverse worked fine. I backed three miles to the nearest shop.I still think that the second one failed because pieces from the TC were still in the system somewhere, but I'll never know for sure. It was an AAMCO rebuild.
If I hadn't needed the truck "right now" when the trans failed after the warranty was up, I would have ordered a BTS or Suncoast. That would have been the end of the trans problems for sure. I run a programmer, but after the third trans failed, I drive like I have an egg between my foot and the "roll-coal-now" pedal when the trailer is hooked up.
Interesting that you mentioned the oilfield trucks. The guy that built my last trans works mostly on oil / gasfield trucks.
Funny, I always told people that it sounded like marbles in a tin can! Very common failure in 99's. I always replaced the aux cooler and blew brake cleaner into the radiator cooler until it looked good in a white cloth. Most would just shoot some air through the coolers leaving a ton of junk in both coolers. When the trans gets hot with the new fluid it breaks the crud loose and it ends up back in your trans. Takes a while to work through the filter/strainer and in about 10-20k you have a slipping non shifting trans again. Brian showed me the passage in my trans for the lockup circuit [I think, been 5years ago] and it was black with crap. The rest of the trans looked really good. Surprised me how good everything else looked. CJ