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Well, its back together again. No drama. Even managed to get the plug back in without burning myself on the hot exhaust. Have to commend some engineer at Jaguar for that electrical connector. I was expecting to require brute force and surgical instruments to undo a brittle plastic clip while leveraging a 12-year fused o-ring, but that cam-lock connector was a piece of cake. Drove to work and back today and dropped off the core at UPS at lunch, total about 22 miles and all seemed well. I'll have to hold off calling it fixed until I've put a couple hundred miles on it as the symptoms were very infrequent but at least it worked outta the box. This task was as much preventative as fixative I think. Plus it really was due for a fluid change so now that's done.
Cost $450 for the VB, $30 for shipping, and about $120 for the fluids and filter so right at about $600 plus $100 deposit for the core. As to Sunbelt, shipping was quick and the packing was excellent. They took my email info and I got an email when it was shipped and could track it. Good customer service. Unless I have problems down the road, I'd use them again.
pdupler, two questions:
Is that Sunbelt Ford you delt with, or some other Sunbelt?
I plan on pulling my valve body for inspection. Are there gaskets that I need to replace when I put it back together?
Thank you. I assume from your reply that the valve body does not have a gasket where it mounts to the transmission. I already have pan gaskets and filters as I'm on my third fluid change.
Well, for a little over ten year update, the A-drum finally grenaded.
Maybe the Sonnax valve body bought me 10 years and nearly 40,000 miles, I dunno. I figure it had probably been compromised/weakened before the Sonnax install. When I search for where to get the upgraded A-drum, there's a few sources that come up, mostly on E-bay but I don't know which one is really the upgraded version or they say its for BMW/Audi. And searching here on the forum, all the source links that came up in my search were posted years ago and are dead now; seems no one has purchased one recently and posted about it. Anybody bought an A-drum in the distant past care to update their vendor source link or tell me exactly what I'm supposed to be looking for? There's one company on ebay selling them for $75 each, says made by Kuhle, but with a seller name of "ulucky", makes me wonder if they forgot the letter "n".
Slowly, slowly, slowly doing this job so figured overdue to post an update. Took the valve body apart to inspect it only to find that the main pressure valve bore was badly worn, far worse even as I remember than the original was ten years ago. But also, there's a really bad gouge in the bore, obviously from the tooling that was used to ream it out. Apparently I got a reman'd unit that was rebuilt with poor quality control (sorry to anyone else who purchased from Sunbelt after me, hopefully mine was just a one-off). Since it was reamed out for the Sonnax valve, I can't just go back with a Transgo kit. So this time I ordered a brand new ZF lower front section and a brand new ZF main valve from California Transmission Supply. Prices really were not bad, a little over $200 for both, actually drop-shipped direct from ZF and faster than I expected too, not that I'm going to be able to put it back together right away.
And just to update, I did take a chance and order the A-drum from Ulucky on ebay. It came quick, well packaged, triple-boxed. I actually love the print design on the Kuhle company cardboard boxes and am saving them - a work of art, no Christmas wrap needed for a gearhead's xmas or b-day gift. The A-drum appeared to be high quality just like the boxes it came in. Piston fit perfect, clutches and steels, snap ring, etc. It's already reassembled and installed in the housing along with the rest of the drums (I went ahead and rebuilt ALL of the drums with genuine ZF kit even tho there wasn't any shrapnel in the pan from the grenade).
Assuming this transmission actually works after I'm done, I'll post later about all the ZF special tools that I made out of not-so-special do-dads from the hardware store.
Got it back together and on the road over the Thanksgiving holiday. Drove it to work one day during the week and out to dinner this evening and so far everything seems to work just fine. Knock on wood. I won't call it good till I've got a few hundred miles on it. Anyway, just thought I'd post another update following this major milestone.
