I gotta give the 4L60E 2 BIG thumbs up!!!!!

I autocross raced my car(engine braking and all),manually shifting back and forth from 1st to 2nd for over 2 years. Before getting away from that sport and put in a higher stall speed convertor(Vig3600) ,i did not put in a shift kit.Only added a Predator programmer,i did not get around to adding a cooler.
Raced my car for over 2 years around town and at the track that way with the Nitrous kit set at 150 rwhp the whole time.

Then changed convertors (1 better for the bottle) at 85,000 miles and my trans tech friend that swapped them for me did a trans (build) at the same time because i thought it should be really close to letting go.

He went all through the trans and told me,and showed me,that all the internals looked so good that . If he did not know i drove hard and raced my car like i do,he would guessed that these parts came out of a stock car driven only as transportation and not like a toy.


Now i know that is only 1 persons car and only 1 tranny out of how many out there.

But if mine did so very well, and i know how i drove/drive it....
I say very impressive job down by GM on this 1! Just my .02 worth.


P.S. My stock rear-end lasted until about 4 weeks ago,before it let go a few bearings and got really loud.
So i swapped it out for a low mileage M6 unit for the 3:42 gear advantage.
So i really don't think the A4 set up is as weak as it has a rep for.

I pull 1.54 60fts on spray with E/T streets regularly too... 1.61 all motor on DRL's
Dave

 

I run high 12's on street tires all day on my a4. Started to slip a little.. then second gear went somwere else but i know its not in my car not a fan of the fricking auto tranny wish i had m6.. but then id probablly kill my rearend. maybe its my driving habbits.?

 

Perhaps I wasn't clear about the point I was trying to get across. My car is very well maintained and hardly ever manually shifted. I've only got 23,000 on the clock and it took a **** literally within 3 hours of having my cam and PCM put in.

My point is, there should be better quality control so that guys like myself barely making 400 hp shouldn't have to deal with a blown trans when there are plenty of people out there making much more power with the same trans.

I guess a good example would be the '03 Cobra. There are guys all over Detroit running 500-600 rwhp Cobra's out here with simple pulley swaps and tuning that don't have to worry about their bottom ends or stock T56s.

 

BTW, I don't think any of you can honestly say that GM isn't to blame when it comes to some stock **** breaking. I should set up a poll to see how many guys out there blew their stock rear ends with exhaust and sticky tires. But I guess it's too much to ask for a rearend that isn't at it's limits already in stock form; much like the 4L60e.

These cars were meant to be modded and meant to be ragged on. Isn't that what makes a muscle car great? Before the electronically controlled, cost cutting era, real muscle cars ran around with drivetrain components that belonged on full size pickup trucks, why can't ours?

 

I agree with the quality control point. When we opened mine up to put the shift kit we found that many of my components inside where rusted. The car was practicly brand new and my tranny guy said he had never seen a 4l60E look like that before and he was pretty concerned. The thing still hasn't let go yet though.

 

Damn 10s on the stock tranny, I could only hope that mine will last that long. I'm debating wether or not to run DRs with my stock 10 bolt and think we definatly should have had a solid rear-end from the factory.

 

This I can agree with. I can see quality control issues leading to problems like yours, but I just don't think it's a blanket 4L60E design issue, as we both agree that plenty of people have no issues on high mile stock 4L60Es at various mod levels.

 

I really never had as issue with the stock rear either. Most A4 guys that I've seen break a stock 10 bolt did so because of wheel hop. If you can keep that issue under control, then 10s on the stock rear is fully attainable without breakage. We had no issues running 10s on our club project LS1 car on the stock 10 bolt with ET Drags. Actually the stock bottom end let go while the rear was still doing fine. And my own full weight WS6 did fine cutting 1.6 60 foots with the stock 10 bolt on DRs.

But I do agree that the 6-speed guys have it rough with that rear. Their trans is much more violent on the axle and they seem to pop often enough that a better stock rear would be a reasonable request.

And I agree 100% that these cars are meant to be driven hard, and modded. And I think the 4L60E can hold up just fine if modded properly to keep up with major power additions under the hood. For stock or mild bolt-on cars, in most cases the 4L60E seems to last quite a long time. Granted, QC issues could account for some of the early failures (like yours), and for others there is still the issue of excessive abuse and/or poor maintainence.

 

While I agree that the 4l60e and stock 10 bolt are marginal, the notion that GM should build cars to withstand whatever crazy mods we throw on them and frequent drag strip abuse is ridiculous. If are cars are driven as what they were designed to be, street musclecars, they hold up pretty darn well. Sure there are the occasional quality lapses and component failures, but that is a far cry from saying that GM should anticipate the potential mods of future owners. I understand you being pissed that your tranny took a dump at 23,000, but if you want to play, be prepared to pay - period. As for classic musclecars, do you know what the warranty claims were like back then on those cars? Huge. And if you want to compare old to new, I can do that for you. Your old musclecar with pickup truck components was hard pressed to get into the 13's, got 10 mpg, didn't handle, and had no brakes. Is that what you want? I love the old muscle as much as anybody ... but you can't compare apples and oranges.

 

I love playing and I can afford to pay, but that doesn't make you feel much better when your drivetrain components fail prematurely. I understand what you're saying when you talk about old musclecars, and agree QC was probably much worse back then (regarding your warranty claims statement).

I guess I'm one of the unlucky ones

 

Like I said, I understand why you're pissed, and I'd be pissed too. But if you can afford to get that Rock-on in there, everything I've heard tells me you're going to freakin' love it ... hopefully so much so, you'll never look back.

 

I hope so. I'll tell ya, when I first took the car for a spin I was really dissapointed and it actually felt like I lost power. But since the trans was obviously takin a dump on me at the time, I'm expecting great things.

Can't wait to get that trans in

 

Buy TCI rebuilt kit and suitable converter, u will love A4