Rebuilding my automatic

[Mark]

I've had my '84 auto for a couple of years. A few months ago, as I was coming to a stop at a light, there was a "bang" noise, the car jerked to a stop (like I had slammed it into "park") and then it refused to move. The parking brake also wouldn't hold. When I tried to put it in gear, there was a grinding noise. Eventually, I put it in 4wd and drove home with the torque to the rear wheels. I drove it like that for a couple of weeks before buying an '83 hatchback to use while I figured out what to do about the wagon. I stopped by a few transmission shops in town. They quoted me up to $5000-6000 to rebuild it depending on what was wrong and if parts were available. The other option was to install a used transmission from a scrap yard for about $1600. They spent about 2 weeks checking around and eventually called back and said that there were none available in Canada. I eventually crawled under the wagon in the wind and rain in my driveway and removed the transmission myself. This was a horrible job that I never want to repeat. Removing the transmission was easy. It was all the other stuff (rusted and seized exhaust and cooling lines, stripped bolts, etc.) that took me 2 full days to remove. A lift would have made this much easier. When I separated the transmission from the front differential, I could see that the problem was in the governor valve body. This is a sleeve-type coupling that connects the splined output shaft of the transmission to the splined input shaft of the differential. It also has an internal centrifugal valve that controls fluid pressure. The internal splines on one side of this valve body were stripped. I assume they had gradually worn over the years until they were too narrow to withstand the torque and they sheared off. My car always did make a clunk sound when I reversed the torque (put it in drive or reverse). There were absolutely no metal bits in the transmission fluid when I drained it (I filtered it through and old t-shirt when I drained it). I ordered a seal kit from e-bay and had to wait a couple of weeks for that to arrive. In the meantime I had to try and find a replacement governor valve body. There are none available from Toyota. Every time I go in there for a $6 oil drain plug gasket or something, they tell me my car is ``obsolete`` and no longer supported. From some parts breakdown diagrams I`ve seen, the governor is the same on all automatic tercels from the 1st and second generations. All of the scrapyards that I called within a 2-hour drive said that they didn`t have any 80`s tercels, which I find hard to believe. One yard said that they send them to be crushed right away when they get them. I eventually bough an old core fwd transmission from a local transmission shop for $75. It was a gamble since it was removed from a car years ago because it failed somehow. I brought it home and the governor valve body was in decent shape. The splines were slightly worn as is to be expected in a 30-year-old transmission. My original idea was to replace every seal in the transmission while I had it removed, but I decided just to replace the easily-accessible ones since it shifted fine before and I didn`t wan`t to risk screwing it up and causing leaks that weren`t there before.
I put it back together and re-installed the transmission in the car. I had to re-do the transmission cooling lines since I destroyed the originals when removing the transmission. Trying to properly bend the tubing to fit was a nightmare so I ended up using transmission hose to connect the sections of steel tubing, which made it easier to flex the whole assembly as I installed it. After starting it up, it drove fine and I've been driving it for a few days now without any problems. I'm a bit worried about the transmission cooling lines using hose since it passes pretty close to the exhaust. I'm still looking around for a set of replacement steel tercel lines.
Anyways, what I learned from all this is that many auto transmission parts are interchangeable between the 2wd (A55) and 4wd (A55F). I also learned that this is a job I never want to do again.

[Petros]

welcome to the forum!

That is quite a story, and a good solution to your problem. Although a lot of work, you fixed it for very little expense. $5,000+ for a trans overhaul sounds like a rip-off, $2000 should have been more typical. but it really did not need a complete overhaul anyway, as you found out. I would have suspected either the input shaft or even one of the cv axles failing, if you can drive it in 4wd, but not in FWD, that means the trans still works but something is wrong with the front drive train.

Many parts from the 2wd trans are the same as in the 4wd, this is also true with the manual trans as well. The auto trans tercels do show up in the wrecking yards in Washington regularly, so you might consider a trip to our wrecking yards if you need parts in the future.

Good luck with your car!

[dlb]

welcome, mark. i live in shawnigan and just finished fixing up an automatic t4 for a friend of mine in who is also in victoria so you may see your car's doppelganger there sometime. here's the thread on it.

https://tercel4wd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7835

i don't blame you for hating that job. i replaced the clutch on my wife's '91 4x4 toyota pickup last year and removing the trans while laying on a hill in the dirt was a real pain in the ass. good for you for taking a chance and figuring out the parts were interchangeable between the two trans's, that's awesome. like peter said, you saved yourself a ton of money and kept an otherwise good car on the road.

we always seem to have a pretty good collection of forum members here on the island. we've talked about having an island meet up but it's yet to occur. maybe this summer.

[Mark]

Re: the prices....I'm in Canada and we expect to pay at least 3 times what we see normal people paying on the internet. It's pretty crazy to look on the US auto parts websites and see parts at as little as 1/10th the price compared to up here. Of course the shipping negates most of the savings. The auto shop rate here is about $80-90/hr. The Toyota list price for the governor valve was about $400 back when it was available. -Adding in seals, possible planetary gears/clutch plates (if they were available) and the many hours they's charge for the rebuild, I could easily see it running into the thousands.
After mine failed, one of the first things I did was pull the cover off the front differential to see if there were any stripped gears or metal bits and it was all fine. I did a search on a wrecking yard search site and a few came up in Washington State. I would have considered taking the ferry to Port Angeles if there was one nearby on the Olympic Peninsula. I don't want to imagine the cost of getting one actually shipped here.
Over the years of driving 30-year-old vehicles, I've come to the obvious conclusion that you either have to be a millionaire or you have to be prepared to do repair work yourself.
One thing I'm a bit worried about is that I used extreme pressure grease when assembling the seals and splined shafts. After the fact, I realized that I probably should have used auto trans fluid. That grease is now dissolving into the trans fluid. -So far no problems, but I'll probably do a drain/refill eventually to put my mind at ease.

[Mark]

we always seem to have a pretty good collection of forum members here on the island. we've talked about having an island meet up but it's yet to occur. maybe this summer.

The first year or two that I had the car, Victoria seemed to be full of tercel wagons, including several in my neighborhood, then suddenly this winter they all disappeared. Now I might see one a week. This is the site where I discovered the parts interchangeability: http://www.toyotapartsoverstock.com/default.aspx It has the Toyota exploded parts diagrams with the Toyota part numbers.

[dlb]

you need to find a friend who has an account at lordco and use that. i get around 40% off when using my friend's shop account. there used to be a really good canadian online parts site but it folded and now all the canadian sites cost as much as shopping at parts stores w/ no discount, plus you have to wait longer and it's a bigger hassle to return stuff. it's a bummer about rockauto because they have amazing prices but the shipping to canada negates any initial price savings. i wish we had more good options for cheaper parts.

i have another friend that i fixed up an '86 manual trans t4 for who also lives in shawnigan. she lives nearby so i get to see that one all time. it's funny though, sightings seem to come in waves. sometimes i see several tercs per week, but usually only one every few weeks (besides my friends, of course). i actually see a lot more corolla all tracs.

[Mark]

I do have an account with the 40% discount at Lordco. I'd pass the # around, but you have to show military ID (it's a navy account for the base auto club I think, even though I'm not in the auto club). As an example, even with the discount they wanted close to $200 each for rear struts for my hatchback. On Rockauto at the time, they could be found for $9. I noticed that some Canadian Tire parts are a bit less than Lordco even with the discount. So far I'm lucky I haven't had to replace the radiator or something similarly expensive.

[dlb]

that's odd. i've got lots of great deals through lordco with my account. however, i have used other accounts and had weird experiences. for example, i bought headlights for my wife's old truck under a lesser account, and they wound up being more than the price on the shelf! i pointed it out to the parts person and they were very annoyed with me but were so kind as to give it to me at the shelf price, rather than at my more expensive account price. that was a long time ago though and i have generally got great prices since. got a rad for my 92 civic for $74, which i thought was pretty good.

i also notice that some parts places are cheaper for certain items. ultimately, it's too inconvenient to call 3 or 4 places each time you want something though. i may spend a few extra $$ now and then at lordco but by and large, i've saved lots.

[xirdneh]

I had an automatic that had the exact same problem (the governor)
i converted the car to manual
i kept the auto tranny in the shop for about 6 years just in case someone wanted it
finally gave it to a local tranny repair shop

[Petros]

$80 to $90 an hour is a normal shop rate around here too. Some large cities will get well over $100/hr. So that prices is still way too high, parts kits could be costly, but no more than about $600-1000. even in canada. I think the shop was telling you they did not want to do it, figuring you would take your old car and go away.

[Mark]

got a rad for my 92 civic for $74, which i thought was pretty good.

That's a much better price than I was hoping for. The only time I was looking into getting a radiator was years ago with my '82 Tercel. I forget who I checked with (it wasn't the dealer), but they wanted $380 for it. Less than $100 is much less scary. I'll still continue to use distilled water instead of tap though.

[Mark]

$80 to $90 an hour is a normal shop rate around here too. Some large cities will get well over $100/hr. So that prices is still way too high, parts kits could be costly, but no more than about $600-1000. even in canada. I think the shop was telling you they did not want to do it, figuring you would take your old car and go away.

I think you're probably right about them not wanting to take on the job. They didn't seem to eager about finding a replacement transmission either. I had to call back several times over 2 weeks to remind them before they finally said they couldn't find any. On the plus side, all the local transmission shops were very helpful with trying to find me an old governor valve that they may have laying around. Even though they knew the work was being done by myself, they spent the time to hunt around for me. For any locals, Victoria Transmission and Bullfrog Transmission in Victoria seemed pretty keen to help me out even though they weren't getting much money out of it. One guy actually correctly guessed the vehicle the governor came out of when I showed it to him. Victoria Transmission was honest up front and told me it wasn't worth my money to have it rebuilt.