carcollector
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2007
- Messages
- 211
- Reaction score
- 74
- Points
- 28
- Location
- Adelaide
- Members Ride
- WM Caprice, VZ SS Crewman, ZB Calais V,VE CalaisV
As someone who has recently had a 5L40 completely lunch itself - definitely go for the external trans cooler. I suspect that part of our problem was an internal crack in the radiator, allowing a bit of coolant to get into the transmission fluid - I thought I'd detected it early enough and gone to an external trans cooler, but in hindsight, maybe not. Also, the original torque converters start falling to bits, clogging up the filter and killing the gearbox. Looking back on it, I did notice that the lockup into 5th gear was slowly getting a bit clunky - probably a late warning sign that the TC is dying. If you're planning on keeping the car, and it sounds like it would be worth it being such low km, maybe factor in changing the torque converter over to a rebuilt (better) one before it starts to fall apart internally.