2011 Yukon XL Denali torque converter shudder. Initial thoughts and questions

[Dadnali68]

Hi all,

My 2011 Denali XL AWD is having some issues, and I believe its converter shudder.

-vibrates and rpms fluctuate by about 200 every time.
-only happens cold.
-only happens in higher gears, 5th and 6th.
-Trans itself is still very smooth shifting.

Here's where I'm looking for information:

-this sounds like textbook converter shudder, correct?
-truck is 15 years old and lives in western New York. It's getting pretty crispy with rust. Probably not worth putting a new trans into, but very worth putting a new converter into and doing a fluid and filter exchange.
-needs a rear main seal while im in there.
-good idea to "flip the pill" while its out to help with cooling?
-looking at the VEGE HD torque converter from summit racing. Anyone used it before?
-what are some other "while you're in there" tasks I should look at doing?
-I've only ever pulled a trans on rwd cars. Anything I need to know about an AWD pull? Can I keep the transfer case attached? Any fluid exchanges I should do the Tcase?

Any help would be appreciated. I've done a bunch of reading on here, and I think I have a solid plan that fits my circumstances, but I'd love some outside input from folks that have seen it/done it.

Thank you!

 

[LSCALADE]

I got 2011 Escalade still driving on a bad converter a year later.

I did this all through tunning.

Gotta up the pressures, on the TCC, 26psi move it to 50 for a start. grab the gain from 1.5 move it to 1.0. Remove all slip, disable the AFM.

Then on the tcc clutch enable vs throttle. somewhere over 40% maybe a tad lower the torque demand on the clutch at 5th and 6th gear is too much and it starts slipping no matter how much pressure you feed it, so you set the enable and disable speeds to some very high numbers so the TCC simply unlocks when it sees high loads, then relocks when the loads come down. That right there has deleted all shudder and I bet I can sell it that way and the next owner would never know.

Its a band aid for me, as I dont feel like dropping trans on a rusty 16yo truck. But through tempering and learning with HP tuners it worked for me.

As always drain the fluid, put new filter and new fluid in it and some TC shudder from lubeguard as a start. But this will only get worse if you dont tune that stuff out.

 

[Doubeleive]

If it is shuddering already you can pretty much count on at the very least a mild rebuild, the bell housing on these get messed up when the torque converter starts going then you may as well do a kit on it as well. If you let it go it will take out the pump too.
the bell housing is completely different than a 4L
the trick is to replace the oem converter with a billet converter BEFORE the problems start.