Yesterday morning everything started off normal pulling out of my neighborhood. The second I got out onto the main road, the truck wouldn’t shift into 2nd. I had to run it all the way up to 4k before it would kick in. After shifting into 2nd, 3rd and OD were normal, no issues. I started playing with it while driving, and found if I let off the gas around 25-30 it’ll shift just fine. If I let off before that speed, it’ll shift, then down shift back to 1st and run up to again 3-3500, then I either have to go to 4k or get it up to speed at 25/30 and let off. I wound up detouring to the interstate and hopping on, once cruising it was completely normal. Give it some gas and it down shifted to 3rd, back to od, 50-60 pulls it was doing great.
So I called the trans shop and wound up dropping the truck off. I told him upon drop off that I wanted him to pull the pan and inspect everything, along with a test drive. So I wait a few hours and he finally calls and tells me 2nd gear band has snapped, and that it’s skipping 2nd gear and going straight to 3rd. Now of course my distributor only carries the Monster full rebuild kits in stock, NOT replacement parts. So I had them dig and found the soonest I can replacement parts from them is 3-4 days out, and I didn’t even know what exactly needed replaced as it would require a tear down of the transmission again.
So…I walked my happy ass 4 miles over to the shop after work and picked up the truck as I had no other ride home. Got in the truck, and took off. I started really trying it out, and found a problem in my mechanic’s theory….either the Monster kit added another gear….or I have 2nd gear. If I drive super slow then it’ll shift normal. 2nd. 3rd. OD. If I get on it slightly, it acts up going into 2nd. If I get on it pretty hard, it’ll run through all 4 gears completely normal and get up to that 75-80 on the interstate with ease. Also, if I manually shift it 1st to 2nd, it does the same thing…but it shifts into 2nd gear. Then if I move to drive it shifts to 3rd, then after 45ish it kicks into OD. Now last night while driving it, I decided to full on floor it to see what it would do, and my heart sunk. It did the same thing as before the rebuild, which is not catching gear. Basically it kicks out of gear and red lines, let off the gas and it shifts into 2nd and continues on. Beyond pissed as that was one of the main problems I was having when climbing passes at 65-70mph.
Now what ****** me off the most is after I was told 2nd gear hand gone out, I started looking up symptoms for a snapped band. Basically either I’m 1 out of hundreds, or something else is up. I also called my co-worker last night who’s slightly familiar with transmissions, and he told me the same thing I had been reading. Snapped bands will do at least one, if not both of these two things. 1) Will not shift into the gear with the band snapped. Period. Will not do it. So I shouldn’t have 2nd gear. 2) Depending on the issues, a transmission with a snapped band will not shift past that gear with the issues. So basically I technically shouldn’t be able to shift OUT of 1st gear.
