Lidio
01-20-2004, 02:26 PM
There’s been quite a bit of talk lately (some of it misleading) around the current Over-Drive automatic known as the 4R70W that comes in the ’03 Marauder and I thought I would share some of my experience and insight.
I want to mention that I’ve been into putting Ford’s modern rear-drive automatics with overdrive in very powerful Street/Strip cars since the early 90’s. I started doing it when it wasn’t cool to have an AOD in a fast street Mustang. Everyone would throw away AOD’s while I was recommending keeping them and doing the right things to them to make them live behind some serious small block Ford’s in street cars. Every thing I’m about to say is pure experience…. And LOT’S of it with AOD’s, AOD-E’s and the current 4R70W.
Although we do not mail order our AOD’s and our name is not known nationally for doing one of the best AOD’s in the country, we consider our units and experience with them to be one of the best. We are not big on “mail ordering” a lot of our services because we found that mail order compromised our reputation due to poor self-installs and end user’s lack of competence on many occasions (not every one so please don’t be offended). We do mail order many components, but our SuperDuty AOD isn’t one of them. We require the install be done by us for any serious AOD work.
Some of the problems that a few have complained about have had the misfortune of a bad build of some kind from the factory, some kind of running change, something completely unexplained or could have been brought on themselves with mods or driving style.
All I know is that the 4R70W is one of the toughest automatics Ford has ever put into rear drive cars for small block applications. When this trans is treated to only minor upgrades, I believe (and have proven with my yellow coupe) it will hold up to well over 700+HP! I’ve put dozens of AOD-E’s and 4R70W’s behind 500+ RWHP cars for several years now.
The only problem with the specific 4R70W in the MM outside of bad luck at manufacturing is that it doesn’t shift hard enough at WOT for the 1-2 shift when a blower or something of that nature has been added. I’m talking like 125+HP more at the flywheel. I feel that the MM trans can shift very firm and positively behind a Marauder engine with just basic bolt-ons. I’ve found that through basic chip reprogramming the MM trans will hit very hard for the 1-2 shift and very hard for the 2-3 shift as well. Once this has been achieved there’s nothing more you need to do. It’s the sliding into gear during upshifts that causes problems and even that isnt the end of the world (I’ll get to that too). I basically tell all my customers with AOD-E’s and 4R70W’s that if you are abusive only in the first three gears and keep it out of overdrive when really horsing around, the AOD-E’s are pretty much indestructible. The overdrive can be weak because it uses a small band and not a clutch pack to apply OD. But outside of that they can handle more than most would have ever believed when they first started to come out a few years ago.
The Trilogy #1 car has had absolutely no trans problems at all with it’s original 4R70W. Immediately after installing the blower on the car I noticed that through CPU programming I could get the 3rd gear upshift to hit so hard that I backed it off some. But the 2nd gear upshift on the other hand was not positive and as firm as I would like even with the TV pressure adjustment maxed out with the chip tuning. Without mechanical intervention into the valve body, there just wasn’t any way to get a very firm shift. First, I removed the 2nd gear accumulator which dampens the 1-2 shift. This proved to not be enough - it didn’t hit from 1st to 2nd as hard as I thought it should but we left it that way on the #1 car for over 26,000 miles now. 26,000 very, very hard miles, abused and raced - even with a small amount of slip from 1st to 2nd (which I still don’t like) it hasn’t burnt anything up.
In the summer of 2000 just to prove to everyone how much a stock 4R70W and a stock, weak - pistoned ’96 32V Cobra motor could take, myself and a partner campaigned a ’91 Mustang LX. He owned the car and I owned the power train. It had a 23psi of boost, Vorteched ’96 32V Cobra motor that put the car into the mid 9’s in the ¼ mile at over 143mph!
The trans was a “used” unit (not even rebuilt) from a ‘98GT Mustang 4R70W that we were told had 20,000 miles on it. We got it for $300.00. All we did was put in a Performance-Automatic valve body that still let it shift automatically, but had a trans-brake feature and the ability to make the up-shifts much firmer. That’s all we did to it! No other mods to the core of the trans at all. The trans was shifted automatically with a stand-alone computer from a company called Baumann. This “used” trans went that whole summer of 2000 with over 110 mid 9 second passes on it without ever having one problem! The car weighed about 3200lbs with a driver. In fact when we took it out to have it gone through and looked at, the trans guy said “What am I doing with it, it looks OK inside?” This is where I really learned how much you could throw at a 4R70W.
We recently tried the mod posted here called the “J-mod” on a MM trans and we only modified what dealt with the 1-2 shift as I feel the 2-3 shift can be made overly firm at WOT with the chip programming. The J-mod does not raise mainline pressure. It only makes the accumulator work less or not at all. And the J-mod makes a few feed holes less restrictive. This J-mod was done to a MM trans that also got a 2nd gear clutch pack that was put together with better/high performance clutches, but no more then the original quantity of clutch’s was used - which is 4 clutches. Early, non V-8 and some V-8 AOD-E’s and 4R70W’s only had 3 clutches for 2nd gear. Upgrading those to four is second nature now.
When we got it running (the J-Moded car) the 1-2 shift was noticeably firmer than without the J-mod or the better clutches, but it is still not enough in my opinion. Although it is much, much better and can be let go, which we did. For a seriously banging 1-2 shift behind some serious power, I feel the MM’s needs a tried-and-true shift kit that alters main-line pressure as well as all the other little tricks in the valve-body.
What most of this long post is trying to say is that the internals of the MM trans do not need to be upgraded at all if the trans is properly “shift-kitted” while it still has low, unabused miles on it (baring any unforeseen factory flaws etc) and no drive-line vibrations. We have yet to install a full after-market shift kit in a MM to this day, because of how good they shift NA with just programming. And the way they shift from 1-2 even with a mild blower application seems to be OK as well but could use addressing.
I have found over the years that one of the biggest problems with the 4R70W’s and AOD-E’s is that they downshift very poorly and flare when going from 4th (OD) back to another gear like 3rd or 2nd from a role at high loads or near WOT when requesting the 4 to 3 or 4 to 2nd down shift. This 4th downshifting flare (with out making this post even longer) is not fixable. I’ve tried many things and tricks over the last few years and it won’t go away. When an AOD-E has to go from 4th back to any other gear, the OD band has to come off and the forward clutch has to come back on. This action has a delay that we can’t seem to fix no matter what we tried. It only becomes a problem and very noticeable when you’ve added significant power and torque to one of these transmissions. Basically what happens is for an instance when the trans goes back/downshifts from 4th under heavy load to 2nd or 3rd it flares into neutral then grabs 3rd or 2nd depending on the road speed and which gear is best suited for that down shift. What we found is that when this flare happens it is very rough on the input shaft and the 2nd gear “One-Way-Roller”. If the driver lets this condition occur enough while driving (and believe me it can be felt) it eventually hurts the second gear sprag (also known as the One-Way-Roller). Newer ones use a ratcheting mechanism not a conventional One-Way-Roller.
What I do on the cars that have lots of power added to them like a blower etc. is make efforts to program the chip so that it doesn’t so easily want to down shift from 4th at higher speeds and high throttle angles. Once a power adder has been installed they really can handle staying in 4th all the time at speeds over 60-70 unless the driver really woods the gas pedal. The way I program toque converters to stay unlocked at speeds under 60ish, they hardly ever need to down shift out of 4th at light loads just to pass other cars easily. This feels rather nice even when they don’t have a power adder. Just let the converter do what it’s meant to do - multiply torque.
In short if you made it this far reading this:
Firm up the shifts accordingly and keep an AOD-E or 4R70W out of OverDrive when you know you’re going to be very abusive and they are very reliable. To avoid the 4th down shift problem at highway speeds, I recommend to manually turn off OD while just beginning to mash the pedal and if you time it right it will begin to down shift from 4th before the power really comes on and the 4th downshift flare is not as noticble and wont damage the trans. Plus it takes lots of these type of 4th downshifting flares to do the damage.
If you made it this far…. Thanks for reading this!!
Just wanted to share some insight into and my experience with the 4R70W.
I want to mention that I’ve been into putting Ford’s modern rear-drive automatics with overdrive in very powerful Street/Strip cars since the early 90’s. I started doing it when it wasn’t cool to have an AOD in a fast street Mustang. Everyone would throw away AOD’s while I was recommending keeping them and doing the right things to them to make them live behind some serious small block Ford’s in street cars. Every thing I’m about to say is pure experience…. And LOT’S of it with AOD’s, AOD-E’s and the current 4R70W.
Although we do not mail order our AOD’s and our name is not known nationally for doing one of the best AOD’s in the country, we consider our units and experience with them to be one of the best. We are not big on “mail ordering” a lot of our services because we found that mail order compromised our reputation due to poor self-installs and end user’s lack of competence on many occasions (not every one so please don’t be offended). We do mail order many components, but our SuperDuty AOD isn’t one of them. We require the install be done by us for any serious AOD work.
Some of the problems that a few have complained about have had the misfortune of a bad build of some kind from the factory, some kind of running change, something completely unexplained or could have been brought on themselves with mods or driving style.
All I know is that the 4R70W is one of the toughest automatics Ford has ever put into rear drive cars for small block applications. When this trans is treated to only minor upgrades, I believe (and have proven with my yellow coupe) it will hold up to well over 700+HP! I’ve put dozens of AOD-E’s and 4R70W’s behind 500+ RWHP cars for several years now.
The only problem with the specific 4R70W in the MM outside of bad luck at manufacturing is that it doesn’t shift hard enough at WOT for the 1-2 shift when a blower or something of that nature has been added. I’m talking like 125+HP more at the flywheel. I feel that the MM trans can shift very firm and positively behind a Marauder engine with just basic bolt-ons. I’ve found that through basic chip reprogramming the MM trans will hit very hard for the 1-2 shift and very hard for the 2-3 shift as well. Once this has been achieved there’s nothing more you need to do. It’s the sliding into gear during upshifts that causes problems and even that isnt the end of the world (I’ll get to that too). I basically tell all my customers with AOD-E’s and 4R70W’s that if you are abusive only in the first three gears and keep it out of overdrive when really horsing around, the AOD-E’s are pretty much indestructible. The overdrive can be weak because it uses a small band and not a clutch pack to apply OD. But outside of that they can handle more than most would have ever believed when they first started to come out a few years ago.
The Trilogy #1 car has had absolutely no trans problems at all with it’s original 4R70W. Immediately after installing the blower on the car I noticed that through CPU programming I could get the 3rd gear upshift to hit so hard that I backed it off some. But the 2nd gear upshift on the other hand was not positive and as firm as I would like even with the TV pressure adjustment maxed out with the chip tuning. Without mechanical intervention into the valve body, there just wasn’t any way to get a very firm shift. First, I removed the 2nd gear accumulator which dampens the 1-2 shift. This proved to not be enough - it didn’t hit from 1st to 2nd as hard as I thought it should but we left it that way on the #1 car for over 26,000 miles now. 26,000 very, very hard miles, abused and raced - even with a small amount of slip from 1st to 2nd (which I still don’t like) it hasn’t burnt anything up.
In the summer of 2000 just to prove to everyone how much a stock 4R70W and a stock, weak - pistoned ’96 32V Cobra motor could take, myself and a partner campaigned a ’91 Mustang LX. He owned the car and I owned the power train. It had a 23psi of boost, Vorteched ’96 32V Cobra motor that put the car into the mid 9’s in the ¼ mile at over 143mph!
The trans was a “used” unit (not even rebuilt) from a ‘98GT Mustang 4R70W that we were told had 20,000 miles on it. We got it for $300.00. All we did was put in a Performance-Automatic valve body that still let it shift automatically, but had a trans-brake feature and the ability to make the up-shifts much firmer. That’s all we did to it! No other mods to the core of the trans at all. The trans was shifted automatically with a stand-alone computer from a company called Baumann. This “used” trans went that whole summer of 2000 with over 110 mid 9 second passes on it without ever having one problem! The car weighed about 3200lbs with a driver. In fact when we took it out to have it gone through and looked at, the trans guy said “What am I doing with it, it looks OK inside?” This is where I really learned how much you could throw at a 4R70W.
We recently tried the mod posted here called the “J-mod” on a MM trans and we only modified what dealt with the 1-2 shift as I feel the 2-3 shift can be made overly firm at WOT with the chip programming. The J-mod does not raise mainline pressure. It only makes the accumulator work less or not at all. And the J-mod makes a few feed holes less restrictive. This J-mod was done to a MM trans that also got a 2nd gear clutch pack that was put together with better/high performance clutches, but no more then the original quantity of clutch’s was used - which is 4 clutches. Early, non V-8 and some V-8 AOD-E’s and 4R70W’s only had 3 clutches for 2nd gear. Upgrading those to four is second nature now.
When we got it running (the J-Moded car) the 1-2 shift was noticeably firmer than without the J-mod or the better clutches, but it is still not enough in my opinion. Although it is much, much better and can be let go, which we did. For a seriously banging 1-2 shift behind some serious power, I feel the MM’s needs a tried-and-true shift kit that alters main-line pressure as well as all the other little tricks in the valve-body.
What most of this long post is trying to say is that the internals of the MM trans do not need to be upgraded at all if the trans is properly “shift-kitted” while it still has low, unabused miles on it (baring any unforeseen factory flaws etc) and no drive-line vibrations. We have yet to install a full after-market shift kit in a MM to this day, because of how good they shift NA with just programming. And the way they shift from 1-2 even with a mild blower application seems to be OK as well but could use addressing.
I have found over the years that one of the biggest problems with the 4R70W’s and AOD-E’s is that they downshift very poorly and flare when going from 4th (OD) back to another gear like 3rd or 2nd from a role at high loads or near WOT when requesting the 4 to 3 or 4 to 2nd down shift. This 4th downshifting flare (with out making this post even longer) is not fixable. I’ve tried many things and tricks over the last few years and it won’t go away. When an AOD-E has to go from 4th back to any other gear, the OD band has to come off and the forward clutch has to come back on. This action has a delay that we can’t seem to fix no matter what we tried. It only becomes a problem and very noticeable when you’ve added significant power and torque to one of these transmissions. Basically what happens is for an instance when the trans goes back/downshifts from 4th under heavy load to 2nd or 3rd it flares into neutral then grabs 3rd or 2nd depending on the road speed and which gear is best suited for that down shift. What we found is that when this flare happens it is very rough on the input shaft and the 2nd gear “One-Way-Roller”. If the driver lets this condition occur enough while driving (and believe me it can be felt) it eventually hurts the second gear sprag (also known as the One-Way-Roller). Newer ones use a ratcheting mechanism not a conventional One-Way-Roller.
What I do on the cars that have lots of power added to them like a blower etc. is make efforts to program the chip so that it doesn’t so easily want to down shift from 4th at higher speeds and high throttle angles. Once a power adder has been installed they really can handle staying in 4th all the time at speeds over 60-70 unless the driver really woods the gas pedal. The way I program toque converters to stay unlocked at speeds under 60ish, they hardly ever need to down shift out of 4th at light loads just to pass other cars easily. This feels rather nice even when they don’t have a power adder. Just let the converter do what it’s meant to do - multiply torque.
In short if you made it this far reading this:
Firm up the shifts accordingly and keep an AOD-E or 4R70W out of OverDrive when you know you’re going to be very abusive and they are very reliable. To avoid the 4th down shift problem at highway speeds, I recommend to manually turn off OD while just beginning to mash the pedal and if you time it right it will begin to down shift from 4th before the power really comes on and the 4th downshift flare is not as noticble and wont damage the trans. Plus it takes lots of these type of 4th downshifting flares to do the damage.
If you made it this far…. Thanks for reading this!!
Just wanted to share some insight into and my experience with the 4R70W.