T56 Wagon #2 is Rolling!

Whoo-hoo! My budget T56 build is on da road! Thanks to JaySS for the electrical help. This car used 3.73 gears in conjunction with an M28 trans with a 3.36 gear ratio. That creates the same gearing as the mroe common '94-'96 trans with 4.56 gears. Pictures to follow...

I gotta say, this is a better driving experience than my late trans/4.10 gear combo by quite a bit. The car just acts better. Feels more like a factory car. I put the numbers in a spreadsheet for your viewing pleasure. The conclusion is this:

M28/3.73 = M29/4.10 = MM6/4.56

Here's Sixth gear with the various trans/gear combos. Of note is the fact that the M28/3.73 car has a driveshaft RPM of 4838 at 108 MPH, versus the MM6/4.56 car with Driveshaft RPM of 6000 at 109 MPH. In both cases the engine is spinning 3000 RPM.

The M29 trans in sixth is a different story - that's a close-ratio trans, so when the enginge is spinning 3000 RPM you'll be travelling 10 MPH slower than with the other combinations.

I am planning to pick up Bewbs' M29 trans this weekend for my DCM car. I'm thinking the close-ratio trans with the 4.10 gears will be a great setup. I'll be sportin' that combo next spring.

Congrats! Where's the Video!

Congrats!

Here's some pictures of the install, starting with a copy of Nick's picture:




Below are the very un-finished interior pics. I cut the carpet a bit big, but it's shot anyhow. If I put a console in it'll be covered. If I leave the stick in the floor look as is, I'll need to sew up the carpet. Gotta stay cheap since this is my driver!

I didn't take any in-process pics of this install because I had a bunch from the F2B install of my DCM '95. I've posted some random pics from it below. This car looked exactly the same but the interior overspray is DGGM and all the brackets are blue!

Top bracket install:

Stuff mounted:

Key mod - push button on ignition switch to prevent accidental locking of the steering:

Oh... and just because it's wrong to have a gauge cluster with at T56 that looks like this:





... I did this:

Very nice!

6 spd wagon with a bench seat? meh,.. old news,. time for a solenoid operated 6 spd , padlle shift operated,. no floor shifter

well least i was unique and cool for 10 mins or so till somebody copied me,..

having more than 1 six speed wagon is sheer gluttony,..should be banished back to the show off forum misc section,..
Nick

phantom 309 wrote:

...well least i was unique and cool for 10 mins or so till somebody copied me,..

Hehe. Actually I think I'm going to need to go with a console anyhow. The wife needs to learn to drive a stick, and she needs the seat to be almost all the way up.

Yaaarrrggghh! So I drove up to Bewbs' place yesterday to pick up an M29 for my T56 collection... and my second M28 (the one with the moody 5th gear) started making a real bad howling noise. Still an improvement over the first one (which will go into third only after a fight).

Oh well... the M29 was slated for the '95 DCM (it has 4.10 gears). Looks like I might need to drop that bad boy into my beater until I get one of the M28s working.

The good thing about a T56 is that even though they may be in need of repair, the car keeps moving. Last time I lost a 4L60E I was walkin'...

Wagon Collector wrote:

The good thing about a T56 is that even though they may be in need of repair, the car keeps moving. Last time I lost a 4L60E I was walkin'...

Not that i'm a 4L60E cheerleader, but 4L60Es have partial failures as often as T56s. And if you really ask, a disturbing number of T56 owners have had multiple issues with either their transmission or clutch but for some reason don't treat it with the same level of disdain as 4L60E owners. The 4L60E has a number of survivability tips. to wit:

1. Had a guy who lost 2nd gear in his. So I told him to crawl under the car and unplug the trans connector; he drove to my house in third with no problems.
2. Lose reverse? just park uphill.
3. I drove my old wagon for 9 months on a cracked forward piston just by leaving it in D instead of OD. I even towed a parts car home with it.
4. burned-out 3-4 clutchpack still leaves you 1st, 2nd and reverse.
5. Broken sunshell lost you 2, 4 and R? Just rev it up in 1st and then let off to shift directly to 3rd.
6. If worse comes to worse, GM designed the 4L60E to still have 1st gear even if all else is lost.

BTW, I'm not downplaying the utter SUCK of having a transmission failure leave you stranded somewhere. Last christmas, our Chrysler minivan had a hard part failure and lost everything but 1st gear when we were about 10 miles north of Getttysburg, PA, with my pregnant wife and 2-year-old in the car too. It was definitely unsettling, especially when we were in the one vehicle I own whose transmission I HADN'T beefed up.

sherlock9c1 wrote:

5. Broken sunshell lost you 2, 4 and R? Just rev it up in 1st and then let off to shift directly to 3rd.

Yeah, I did have that happen once. I'm not too pissed because both of these trannies came from boneyards. While I'll at least try a used T56 (even though I bitch about them not working), I wouldn't hardly consider putting a 4L60E in a car without having it rebuilt. Not sure why, just seems wrong... plus I have a good automatic trans shop right near my house.

I don't blame you. A lot of T56 failures are "non-critical" - you can still limp the car home because the gears are independent. In a 4L60E, you need most of everything to be working.

I was going to write that I'm surprised more shops don't offer a quick "4L60E teardown and inspection" because I got to the point where I could do it in an hour. But I would inevitably uncover other problems or problems about to occur and then it's a slippery slope as to how much money one would want to put into the thing. The final problem was that ALL resultant problems would be blamed on the work I did, even if I didn't even touch the part that failed, and it didn't look like it was going to fail. That's why so many shops charge $$$ for a rebuild.

Okay, so both M28s need to be torn down and rebuilt. I'll be putting in the M29 trans I got from Bewbs this weekend. Hope it works. Gearing won't be quite what I was looking for but it'll do until I get a working M28.

I drove the second M28 to Flint and back without 5th gear. No problem there, but it picked up a very loud Howl about an hour away from home. Hope I didn't screw up any gears - they're made from pure unobtanium these days!

Okay... junkyard T56s FTMFL!

Wagon Collector wrote:

Okay... junkyard T56s FTMFL!

Yep.

BTW, a couple of tips on working on T56s:
1. Use a hole saw and drill a hole in your workbench so that you can put the transmission face down on the bench to work on. Let the input shaft go right through the hole.
2. For any gears you need to pull off the long shaft, just buy a 3-jaw puller from Harbor Freight and substitute their little shorty connector bars for long ones made out of sheet stock you can buy from any hardware store. Figure out the length you need, drill bolt holes, and away you go.

That sucks. I bought my junkyard T56 with 86 000 miles on it out of a 96 Trans Am. It has done over 30 000 miles of hard service in my SS without a problem.

Just got the M29 in and it works great! I don't like the first gear as well as the M28 transmissions, but the shallower drop between gears is very nice. Cool trans. It'll be going in my '95 DCM in the spring. I think it'll be perfect with the 4.10 gears.