[Sprung17]

I noticed a couple of people on the forum with a high stall speed torque converter. I think one of the person was NickD. How do you find out what your current stall speed is? I have a 93 LS. type I.

NickD if you are reading this, how's the auto tranny upgrade? any feel on it, along with the new torque converter?

 

[NickD]

The easiest way to tell your stall speed is to put her in first gear, hold the break and accelerate till your tach stops. Stock should be ~1800RPM.

The high stall torque converter kicks ass. It lets the revs run up nicely from a stop to get great launches and not to mention even at highway speeds the revs will lurch up some as the car pulls foward.

The Level 10 rebuild didn't go as well as I had hopped. It shifts very harshly, even thunks into gear along with severe tranny slippage.

The problem behind this i believe is it was improperly tuned. Level 10 is a good hour away from me so I had the kit installed at a closer place recommended to me. That was a mistake. I managed to contact Level 10 and I will be heading up there so they can tune it properly, though this won' t happen till after I fix my headgasket. Can't give them a car to fix that overheats when they try to test it. hehe... But with the Level 10 kit it ups the power the tranny can take to close to 700hp.

 

[Sprung17]

What brand is your high stall torque converter??? ALso how much does it run for? I have a mechanic to help do the install for me, but the price of the unit itself is??? thanks for the info. I am still in search of more power.

 

[NickD]

It is a Pro-Torque torque converter I bought for, IIRC $405. Take note, it does not add any horsepower or torque to your car. It simply applies what you have to the wheels more efficiently if you drive it right.

 

[Sprung17]

thanks. i heard that upgrading the torque converter is one of the best upgrade to a car with an auto transmission. thanks for the info.

 

[NickD]

Yep, aside from some form of forced induction. Gains are anywhere from 0.5 - 1.0 second in the 1/4. You do sacrafice some driveability and loose some luxury feel...

 

[Dali]

hey Nick, could ya go into that a bit on the sacrefices?

 

[NickD]

You will first see a drop in gas mileage. Everytime you start from a stop the engine will rev a little bit more, unless you are extremely gentle on it. Anytime the revs are low and you jerk the throttle you'll see the rev's jump ~200 RPM even at 70mph which gets you closer to your peak torque, feels great as you hual ass but gas mileage is bad. It also sometimes confuses the automatic shifting.

Sometimes when I am just driving normally, moderate throttle and what-not I confuse the auto and it will upshift, downshift then upshift again. Occasionally when it shifts the torque converter will hold the revs higher putting more stress on the tranny. I also felt it wise to add a tranny cooler ($60) after seeing smoke wafting up from the overflow pipe from the tranny due to a long, hard drive.

 

[Dali]

thanks Nick, I have a few questions for ya. Did you get the tq converter before ya got the Level 10 rebuild? The reason for the question is to see if some of the drivability problems are due to the trans. vs. the tq converter?

 

[NickD]

I had them both done at the same time. Some of the driveability can be from the Level 10 kit so I try and differentiate them best I can. The level 10 kit should really only give me harsher, crisper shifts and not really effect driveability.

I did not get the tranny tuned yet with the Level 10 kit in it. I was going to do it back in March but then I started having overheating problem. I can't go to level 10 and have them drive my car with it overheating from a blown headgasket so I was going to wait till I fixed it. As it stands right now my engine is in peices on the garage floor at my parents place. My plans are to hit up Level 10 at the end of August.