Definately Fuddle, IMHO, they have been great with their customer service and spend time answering your questions!

 

hmmmmmm.....if I paid a ton more money for I verter I would think it was faster too. I'll put it this way.....I see alot of people post up and say they love there fuddle verter.....and if you get a little more hp out of a yank you sure paid for it! I have nothing against yank....but damn...it sure seems hard to justify the price. I take a fuddle and the cash for another mod.

 

yank hands down

 

Went from Yank to Fuddle, then another Fuddle. I have raced my car more in a year than most ppl do in three, so I had plenty of seat time with the converters. All things being equal, I would recommend the Fuddle. Why? Price is half, or about depending on model; warranty kicks *** and is trandferable; customer service kicks ***; and honestly I seen performance gains from Fuddle, but it was a different stall and str.
You would have to be hardcore, and order one each same stall, same str, then do a comparo. What you are reading here is half opinion, and we all know how the cheerleaders get. The other half is comparing apples to oranges. Swaping from one stall to the next or str, will definately change the outcome from one brand to the next. I have went from a Yank 3000 which is an excellent all around converter, maybe only a tad small on stall. To a Fuddle 3800 2.5str, and the gains were there, in the 60' and the top end. Normally what seperates one TC from another is those two concerns, the 60' and the efficiency at the top. Log your TC Slip of same stall/str TC's to honestly see which is more efficient.
My $ goes to Fuddle, and the change goes to tires or other things.

*NOTE* In no way am I bagging on Yanks Customer Service, not since new management or wahtever took effect. Or their product in general, as stated I dont see anyone ordering a Fuddle with the same stall and str as a Yank so there really is only Brand Loyalty and speculation.

Charlie

 

i have over 400 passes in my 10 second stock headed stock bottom end Trans Am. i had Yank, i had Fuddle. i am sticking with my fuddle 3600 2.2 str.

 

I highly enjoy my fuddle 3800 2.2str. Awesome people to deal with, even worked with my schedule and had things ready to go on the dot, definately awesome customer service.
Went from Vig 3600 to fuddle 3800.. so i cant really compare beacuse different size stalls, but I definately love the fuddle.

And I had about 400+- extra to throw to some other things.

 

I would take a look around. Most of the fast cars on this board run Yank converters. This has be gone over a million times with TCI/PI/TCS/Midwest etc... I might be buying a fuddle converter but there is no way I can downplay the performance that Yank converters have delivered to so many. There is a reason that so many fast cars run yanks.... They work. I will say In the past there have been complaints about a lack of customer service from them,

Do fuddle converters perform just as good? Maby they do but only time and time slips will tell

 

yank: 1.501 60' on et drags
fuddle: 1.473 60' on m/t radials

same car, same track, same driver, same combination, same tune, etc etc. this is an EXTREMELY consistent car. i cant wait to see what this converter can do going back to the et drags!

not saying fuddle is better than yank. not at all. like i said before a comparison is just going to get the epimps out here and fighting. i am just telling you all MY results.

if you want to talk about money and performance, then lets talk about Neal Chance Racing Converters. their top of the line converters cost 2500 dollars. its the best. but somehow MANY folks seem to go fast without them. in fact, nearly as fast. in a few cases, faster

 

Here is what i plan on doin, I have 6 months till next season to get some stuff heads, cam, RR. And some other stuff so im just lookin into a new verter now, i want a nice beefey stall.

 

Great info! I love posts like this. I would love to see more head to head comparisons. I just dont need to see guys doing 1.7 60 fts saying how there converter is so much better than a yank and that someone wasted money buying a yank. A less expensive alternative to excellent performance is always a good thing

 

You might want to hold out on the converter till you get the mods done, as the converter should be one of the last things to Blend the combo together or you might find yourself paying to remove the converter again and down time to get it restalled, if a change in your plans might just come along.
Good luck with you project
Mike

 

I went from a vig 3800 str? (When I called them and asked what the str was the guy gave me some bull **** about how all converters have the same str and companys that make claims of str are making it up. ) to a YANK SS4000 2.6 str and gained .3 and 5mph in the 1/4. Yanks are extremely efficient. Plus there is more to gain because it hit so hard I had to use the traction control to pull 1.6 60's. With the vig I was able to dead hook and the best it could do was 1.7. I am very happy with my switch obviously with that kind of gain. Oh yeah did I mention it drives 10 times better on the street, not near as loose. YANK

As far as Fuddle, I have not had one but I have read alot of good things about them but I also read alot of good things about vig. From MY experience, Yank is well worth the money.

 

I had very good luck with Yank. Good 60' for my boat and excellent efficency as measured by mph gains and locked vs. unlocked on the dyno. I was fortunate to have been involved with Mike on R&D a few years back. One advantage of Yank is that their converters perform as advertised. They do that because (at least in the past when I was involved) Yank has had access to GM's torque converter dyno. The dyno reads STR, efficency, and stall speed. That allowed Yank to experiment with designs and then test in car only those that had good specs to start with. Most companies are guessing at the STR and are guessing at the stall speed and efficency until someone buys one and sticks it in their car and reports back. Even then STR is a crap shoot.

In no way is this to be consider a negative comment on Fuddle. I have never discussed R&D with them; I'm only discussing my experience with Yank.

 

I take threads like this with a grain of salt. There will always be cowboys shooting for the "best" when they actually can't afford the "best" so its a moot point. Yank make good converters, and have proven performance time and again. What begs the question is why the price gap. IMO its a combination of factors like brand and recognition and also the fact Yank use components like a billet base, which add cost to the overall product. While it looks nicer, and tougher, you wont be eyeballing it once its in your tranny. But theres confidence knowing its there. I am sure theres more to it as well, like R&D, scale of the operation and increased overheads etc...

Form what I have observed Fuddle operate on a different marketing strategy. Their goal is to provide quality budget priced converters with near or equal performance to other big brand manufacturers out there, with as little overheads of manufacture as possible. This makes them cheaper - just enough to get the job done - no more than is needed. Note that Fuddle also make a similar priced converter to Yank - its horses for courses.

If you want to go fast, and live on a budget, as most of us do, then Fuddle caters for that. If you have money to burn, then both companies offer similar products to your taste and wallet. I think Fuddle have reached into a market that was previously untapped, that is, the budget priced end. TCI started off that way, then Competition Cams, their parent company, started raising prices. Its all about market strategy, what the market can afford and is willing to pay.

I think Fuddle has upset a lot of converter companies recently with their customer service, delivery focus and track results. IMO it doesnt mean that Yank is any worse off - far from it. There's room for both.

I have yet to see a Yank unit similarly priced as Fuddle. Thats the crux of it. I wanted to buy a Yank but wasn't going to pay the AUD$1200 to land it here. I just can't afford it. But I could afford the Fuddle and at half the price. So far, it hasn't let me down.

1.71 60' 12.231@112.4MPH
Fuddle 3000/2.0STR "performance series"
Stock Monaro, full weight and bolt-ons only (no cam, no heads, radials, pump gas)

Holds RPM up my steep driveway at under 2000RPM
Fuel economy around 420kms/tank (250 miles) suburban cycle

One point to remember is that a bad tranny/engine calibration will make even a good converter feel like *****.

Am I happy? You bet I am...

 

excellent post MNR-0! it sums it up NICELY!

 

Awesome post! 100%

 

[QUOTE=MNR-0]I take threads like this with a grain of salt. There will always be cowboys shooting for the "best" when they actually can't afford the "best" so its a moot point. Yank make good converters, and have proven performance time and again. What begs the question is why the price gap. IMO its a combination of factors like brand and recognition and also the fact Yank use components like a billet base, which add cost to the overall product. While it looks nicer, and tougher, you wont be eyeballing it once its in your tranny. But theres confidence knowing its there. I am sure theres more to it as well, like R&D, scale of the operation and increased overheads etc...
I have yet to see a Yank unit similarly priced as Fuddle.

Good points!!! but the one thing that sets YANK apart is the fact that Yank is the only performance converter company that uses 100% new parts in is converter, that means that you get every part new, billet cover, pump,turbine, stator,bearings,clutch,hub,o-rings ect. all these parts cost a lot more to buy.
We do not use salvage yard converter cores to build our units as other converter shop do, junk yard converters are cheap and you do not have any history of what and how many miles are on them.
We have done that in the early past and it became a crap shoot if the product would last, and we did not want to sell something that was not fully an Yank piece, we just could not handle the warrenty related costs
that is also why we can offer a 2 year warrenty on the product
and how we became the Special vehicle & Motorsports converter supplier to General Motors for over 12 years

Yes, we did offer a lower priced converters priced the same as other companys offerings but we removed them from or line up back in 1999 Yank had 167 different converters for the LS-1 f-body prices from $280.00 to $1180.00 and in doing that our overall price has dropped even with the cost of steel going up 300% in the past year
Yank wants to give you the best product we can build.

Mike

 

Thanks for the help guys, i guess ill just wait, like i had planned on and ill get back to deciding somemore.

 

To avoid dragging this through the mud, I will keep this short. A clarification: am I hearing Yank say that our product is inferior in build quality, warranty, performance, or any other aspect? I am more than willing to admit that Yank builds a quality product. But our performance series will take considerably more than the stock transmission, and you will not find a higher quality torque converter out there than our HP/Street converter. While other companies also build quality converters, I will proudly stand our converter and our stall/STR rating system up against any in the industry. Thank you.

John Cameron
Fuddle Racing

 

Come on are you guys professionals or little kids on the play ground. BTW Someone needs spell check and thats sad for a big business owner, rep whatever.