<VV> Powerglide interchange

Bill Hubbell whubbell at cox.net
Sun Apr 25 16:51:25 EDT 2010


Tony,

Consider this - the point of GM's modifying the Powerglide was to
accommodate the higher torque of the 164 CID engines.  Your transmission
already had an issue which causes it to operate outside of factory specs.
This pre-existing problem may therefore be masking any problem that might be
caused by mating it to the 110hp engine.

My point is that if we do not run the test with perfectly functioning parts
there will be additional variables introduced that will make it very
difficult to come to any accurate conclusions.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: virtualvairs-bounces at corvair.org
[mailto:virtualvairs-bounces at corvair.org] On Behalf Of Tony Underwood
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 2:32 PM
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
Subject: Re: <VV> Powerglide interchange

At 11:02 AM 4/25/2010, Bill Hubbell wrote:
>I would say that Tony's situation does not answer the question. His 
>powerglide obviously has shifting problems to begin with and is 
>therefore a poor test vehicle.
>
>Bill Hubbell


Let's review:


>No problems so far... with a 50 year old 200,000+ mile  Powerglide
>that's never had a screw turned on it, but still doesn't seem to care
>that it has a 110 behind it instead of the 80hp it came
>with.


This means the transmission *did not care* that it had a 110 behind 
it.   It made no difference in the transmission's every day 
operation.   There was no difference at all between the 80hp engine 
and the 110hp engine as far as the transmission was concerned.

THEN:

I mentioned a quirk this Powerglide has...


>This particular Powerglide has had its odd quirks since day
>one, however...  like the strange shift issue:
>
>
>Downshift the transmission to LOW (like climbing a very steep grade
>and you wanna stop the transmission from constantly upshifting then
>downshifting again etc) and once you shift back into DRIVE it stays
>in LOW until you mash down HARD on the gas, whereupon it shifts into
>DRIVE.   Ease off the throttle and it shifts back down into LOW
>again.   Speed makes no difference, shift "reversal" issue does the
>same thing regardless of how fast you're going.  Stop, and it still
>won't upshift until you mash the gas hard enough to get into the
>kickdown which of course then downshifts the transmission back into
>LOW if you ease off.   When you're going 40 mph trying to clear this
>issue (hopefully) it becomes a bit of an adventure.   But it didn't
>take long to find a fix...
>
>Shift the transmission up into Neutral, then back into Drive, all is
>well again.    Like I said, it's done this since the first day I got
>the car 26 years ago.



MY comments about the manual downshift quirk were a carry-over from 
the original comments about how MY experiences with an ancient 
Powerglide with a later larger engine seemed to make no difference in 
how the transmission functioned.

The comment was also intended to perhaps prompt a reply from anyone 
who might have seen this sort of thing before.


Quirks or otherwise:    It behaves the same with the late model 
engine as it did with the 1960 80hp engine.


I believe that was the original question, wasn't it...?      ;)




tony..


PS:    As long as this 50 year old Powerglide is left in DRIVE and 
allowed to shift automatically, and not manually downshifted into 
LOW, it has NO shifting issues at all and behaves perfectly normally, 
80hp or 110hp.
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