Attention: TDR Forum Junkies I learned the hard way by not fully researching the upgrades I was going to do. A little backgroud is needed before the full story can be told. I have a power edge and 275 injectors on my truck, nothing too radical, but good enough for me. Well, several months ago (five to be exact) I had a reputable mechanic put in a suncoast torque converter. I did research the torque converters and was told by the mechanic, who shall remain nameless, that with what I had this was one of the best and that I would not need anything else. I even asked him about a vb and his reply was (paraphrasing) "you shouldn't need anything else, it's not necessary. " By the way, the mechanic has done some excellent work for me in the past and has worked on diesels for 25 years, so I took his word for it. Well, my college has spring break this week, so I decided to order some things from Nowel at Prefomance Diesel, such as some SPA gauges and an power ez and take a nice enjoyable trip to central california to pick them up. I live in southern ca. and thought it might be a nice trip this time of year. Well, it started out as a nice trip. Can you fell what's about to be told? Met up with Nowel Saturday morning and followed him out to Brandon's place in Modesto. Met Brandon and his wife, really nice folks. Brandon showed me how to replace my fuel filter( I am not that mechanically gifted) and took a whole 5 secs to put the ez on. Took the truck for a test run, and it ran perfect. Waited for Nowel to finish working on Brandon's wifes truck and left. Not more than a mile done the road, here it comes, the truck started chugging and shaking. What the h#$% is going on? Flagged Nowel down and pulled the ez from my truck and heard from underneath the truck a rattling sound. I thought it was the baffle in the resonator that came loose from the weld again, but the noise seemed to be coming from the bellhousing in the transmission. We were on the way to Ripon to watch Adam pull, but we were a little to late. I stayed for about half an hour than decided to try to get back to the hotel in Half Moon Bay. Imagine this, have an auto going up a 5% grade at 55mph at 3000 rpm's. What does that say? Well, I had no choice I had to get back. I barely made it. Took it to Nowel's house on Sunday and drained the pan and had a big ol' pile of debris. I have a mag-tech pan and when I pulled the plug there was about a quarter inch thick stack of filings on the plug. aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhh!!! transmission was shot. I tried to follow Nowel to San Jose to maybe get it worked on, but only got down the street and that was all she wrote. I turned it around and pretty much floored it to only go 15 mph at 2500 rpm's. Pretty sad. So, I did some leg work on my end to get back to so. cal. , but big thanks to Nowel for getting me squared away with a new trans from Bill K. A local gut wanted a reasonable price to rebuild but time I bought a tc and vb. I might as well get a whole new trans from one of the best experts for this truck. So, as I do not have a truck for at least a week, the moral to this story is: if you are going to get a stronger tc, get the vb and save yourself the several thousands of $ on a new transmission. It's not a question of if but when the failure will occur if you have modified you truck. 
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