Alright guys, first off I have a 4L60E A4 Z28... I finally learned how to drive stick in a friends car and now mine is... boring:blah: I am not sure I want to actually swap to a M6 tranny because I do primarily city driving and I don't want muscle spasms from stop and go driving.

I've been searching around and it seems that a manual valve body would be a good compromise. I want to take control of my shifts 1) to make regular commuting a bit more fun, 2) have something a bit different and 3) be able to choose my gears when I'm auto-xing.

Problems I've found is that 4L60E manual valve bodies are a bit rare. I've seen a couple links to them, but from all the stuff I've heard about it being bad to manually shift them is making me a bit weary on what to do. I'd like to find someone who's actually used it. Here are a link I found:

http://www.bulkpart.com/Merchant2/me...0E-4L65Evbkits

I got it from this thread, which seems quite helpful:
http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...ual+valve+body

I really want a ratcheting shifter like a B&M Hammer shifter

I just had a few questions if the kit were to work, or if I got a 700R4 and got a manual valve body put in it:

-With a manual valve body, when you are decellerating from say 45mph in 4th gear to a stop, do you have to wait until the tach is reading like 1000rpms until you downshift, or what? I believe I read somewhere that when you are off the throttle, it acts like it is in neutral... is this true?

-I see in that link it only mentions gears 1-3... would I lose OD? (This is kind of important!)

-Anything else I should know about drivability of a manual valve bodied car?

I was also looking at the paddle shifter kit thats made for the 4L60E... I thought it was kind of cool, not entirely sure if it would be my cup of tea... but would be neat to do just to be a bit different.

 

Ive never had a 4l60E manual valve body but Ive had a 4R70W with a manual valve body with trans brake and here's what I know. In the begining it takes some getting use to. The ride home after the install is a pain because it somewhat feels like you have to re-learn your car for it. You can forget about letting your girlfriend, wife, mom, friend borrow your car because it's to risky to let them take the beast out and have to learn it on thier own in one day. My Mustang made 500+ rwhp. Me and my mom would swap cars all the time when I was living in MD and didnt want to deal with long commutes, traffic, and expensive gas. After the manual valve body she wanted nothing to do with it.
As for driving you get use to it. IN NO WAY IS IT A STICK. It's really nothing like a stick which is the only reason most of us who do it to a daily driver are looking for. Some days it can be very annoying having to down shift and up shift it then having to flip a switch to lock the converter then another switch to go into over drive (if youre not using a timer). It's not like a 5/6 speed where you can just down shift to third when youre ready to race. Most of your time is spent in third and all there is left is O/D and shifting into O/D at WOT is bad. So with that said you end up most of the time having to slow down quite a bit so you can drop it into second, dropping it into first is never an option.
So in the end with all that said your best bet is to just go ahead and get a M6. The hassle of a manual valve body in a DD isnt worth it and most companies will tell you it's not for street use and Ive been told it's not good on your tranny for prolonged use though I had mine forever with no true issues. Also I forgot to mention anytime you take your car to any mechanic, delearship service dept, Pep boys, any shop or place that will have to drive your car to move it in or out of the shop by driving it will 99% of the time not have a clue wtf to do. Theyll end up putting it in D (same as going from the stop light in 4th in a 5 speed) then telling you later something is wrong with your car. I would leave detailed instructions with everyone on how to operate my car and they would still do something stupid. Only one delearship was able to do it correctly and that was only because the kid had one in his fathers drag car. Hope this all helps.

 

Oh yeah, also youre going to need something like B&M offers because youll run the chance of missing first to second and second to third without it. Sounds wierd to say that for a auto car but it happened to me alot with the stocker. I would push it right past second into third. Sucked ***** if I was racing. If you miss 2nd into 3rd it will send you right into nutrael which then would sky rocket your rpm which then will scare the crap out of you if you dont have a rev limiter. Mine shot to the high 7 grand area.

 

Well that would be why if I were to get a manual valve body, it would be ONLY with a ratchet shifter(it only lets you push it one gear at a time, you have to let go of the shifter so it kind of "resets" and will allow you to push it again.




Thank you for all the input! It was very helpful!
I'm guessing the 4R70W is Ford's electronic automatic tranny right?


Anyone else?

 

I had a ratchet shifter for a aode. It looked great and made life 10x's easier to shift. I dont understand why people keep mentioning the transgo shift kit in the same breath as a manual valvebody. No where near the same. And yes that was my stang tranny. Glad it helped.

 

Have you ever thought of getting a torque converter? That will wake your car up and would be more fun to drive.

 

I'd like to stick with the stock converter for a while because you don't want a loose converter when you auto-x...

If anything I'll look into some 3.73 gears, but I'd like to exercise my options first because that would kill mileage, I'll be doing mostly highway driving soon.

I know you mentioned it, but I won't be worrying about needing to downshift 2 gears to race... no more street racing for me I'll be getting my license back next Friday... since November

I want to sort of know what the steps of DDing with one of these involve:
1. start the car out in park
2. shift into first to get going
3. shift up or down only one gear at a time
4. for DDing, shift at say 2200rpms going up, and wait until the tach reads XXXXrpms when you gotta downshift one gear?
5. be careful of leaving a stoplight in anything but 1st gear.

I know a M6 would probably be better, but if the manual valve body isn't good for the 4L60E, I wouldn't be so reluctant to attempt a 700R4 swap since it's mostly a direct bolt-in aside from speedo issues and deleting the tranny from the PCM.


Another question about driving with one:

-when you're decellerating from about 45 to a stop, do you need to downshift one gear at a time, or do you stop at the light... still in say 3rd gear, and downshift to first once you're stopped or nearly stopped?