Torque converter - replace or let it be?

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Geotrash

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Dave
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I have a 2600 circle d and I love it!! It keeps my 6.3 always in the power band. I've only had it for a few days and so far it's been awesome. It's streetable, but when you nail the pedal the power is instant. I'm gonna take it for a drive in the mountains today
Nice. Did you do the install yourself?


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swathdiver

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I’m a max 25k on transmission fluid kind of guy, so that’s helpful validation.

I sent an oil sample of transmission fluid to Blackstone Labs and they said it had about 10K of life left in it when it was at around 36K. So there's some more reasons to change it much sooner than OE recommendation.
 

thompsoj22

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Id say absolutely change it before the trip! We pull a aljo lite at 5k lbs, Currently at 150k miles and i have encouraged the wife to accept that if we want to continue towing the trans is a must. I will do it myself and replace the transfer case chain while im there. I would like to reman the whole trans but it functions perfectly right now and maybe the converter by itself which is "non invasive" and should be a plug and play PM component is the ticket. The chain in the TC seems to have alot of play/slop in it so ill split the case and replace what is required as it is a simple design and not to costly to replace the parts.
 

Jeffnumber6

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I just had my trans rebuilt on my 2012 because the TC failed and took out the pump with it. 195000 mi. I have recently done some towing at or near the max towing capacity. I was not surprised as others have mentioned the TC can / will fail on the 6L80e. I had my transmission rebuilt and have not towed much with it since.
 
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Dave
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Geotrash

Geotrash

Dave
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I just had my trans rebuilt on my 2012 because the TC failed and took out the pump with it. 195000 mi. I have recently done some towing at or near the max towing capacity. I was not surprised as others have mentioned the TC can / will fail on the 6L80e. I had my transmission rebuilt and have not towed much with it since.
Very helpful, Jeff - thank you. Based on everyone's wise counsel here, I'm going to have the torque converter replaced, and will also do the rear main seal, transmission fluid filter, etc as part of the process. I'm thinking of having a shop do the work. Any other upgrades I should consider while they have the transmission out of the truck?
 
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Dave
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Very helpful, Jeff - thank you. Based on everyone's wise counsel here, I'm going to have the torque converter replaced, and will also do the rear main seal, transmission fluid filter, etc as part of the process. I'm thinking of having a shop do the work. Any other upgrades I should consider while they have the transmission out of the truck?
Small update. Called a local transmission shop here that gets great reviews and spoke to the owner. He said that the only other problem we might want to consider fixing proactively is one of the clutch drums (I believe it's the 4-5 drum) has a high failure rate in these. But he also said that that part is almost impossible to get right now. What say all of you?

At the very least, I'm going to have them do the TC. He said about $700 for the labor which sounds very fair to me.
 
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