The New Life of the 3800 "Formula"

[GTRS Fiero]

Chocolate brown?

From the slipping description, I figured that the clutches in the transmission had gone bad.  Since there are several clutches, sometimes shifting manually to other gears can limp you back home.  Itxs been a while since the auto transmission was explained to me, so the details of that statement may be wrong, but the broad strokes should be good.

Does the fluid smell burnt?  Since there is no combustion in the engine, I'm not sure how it would get black.  I've seen brown transmission fluid.

If the engine was leaking oil, it may be low on the stick.

[GTRS Fiero]

It almost seems as if the valve body failed

[TopNotch]

The engine oil is only a little browner than new, and not low.
The transmission oil doesn't smell burned, and seems to be black with micro particles, like something disintegrated. Only first and reverse seem to work now. It will not go into a higher gear. Before I pulled off at that little store, I was really revving my poor 3800 to maintain any speed at all.

[GTRS Fiero]

Sounds like valve body.

[TopNotch]

Well, after verifying that my transmission is a 4T60E, I bought a used one. It's out of a 1995 Oldsmobile with a 3800 engine, and has 118,000 on the clock. $450 including shipping, with a 90 day warranty. Includes torque converter.
I figured $450 isn't too much to gamble.

[GTRS Fiero]

Do you have the transmission, or is it on the way?

[TopNotch]

Do you have the transmission, or is it on the way?

On the way.

[Wreck It Ralph]

Well, after verifying that my transmission is a 4T60E, I bought a used one. It's out of a 1995 Oldsmobile with a 3800 engine, and has 118,000 on the clock. $450 including shipping, with a 90 day warranty. Includes torque converter.
I figured $450 isn't too much to gamble.

Save the old one then I can rebuild it as a spare eventually.

[TopNotch]

My "new" transmission arrived yesterday. It will remain under wraps until I'm ready to put it in.

[GTRS Fiero]

Today I installed a new transmission output shaft seal on the passenger (leaking) side. The job turned out to be easier than I thought it would be. I undid the two side supports, the trailing arm (this is an 88) and the rear sway bar from the knuckle, so that i could swing it out, with the axle, from the transmission. The hardest part was removing the old seal. Fortunately, I have a nice slide hammer that made that possible.

I also have a fixture for the slide hammer shaft for installing the new seal. You can't just hit the seal with a hammer -- you could damage it.

However, I didn't have a perfectly straight shot to the transmission with the shaft, so I had to use the installer off the shaft. But I got it installed perfectly
In undoing the suspension, I found that the infamous 1988 "long bolt" was not very tight. That could explain a slight bit of squirrelly handling I've noticed. So when I re-assembled things, I made sure it was tight. And while I had the rear of the car off the ground, I tightened the other side as well.
Now I'm ready to do some curves without slinging transmission fluid onto the exhaust.

I'm guessing you didn't get pictures of this.  Do you recall if the shaft had splines on the outside?

[TopNotch]

It had splines on the outside, but it was the passenger side. I believe your questionable one is the driver side.

[GTRS Fiero]

No, passenger side, but that does not bode well.

[TopNotch]

I've been slowly taking apart my white car in preparation for replacing the transmission. And i found something else i need to fix.
This is the passenger side axle boot. I wonder if I can just replace the boot with one of those split boot repair kits?

[GTRS Fiero]

Don't bother.

[PK]

I had good luck with a stretch boot.

Loike dis:
https://youtu.be/oEKY0uFlBpc