Banshee365

For some reason I didn't photograph a couple the last parts going into the front of the trans. Probably because my hands were very oily and I was getting in a hurry. From the last photo looking into the front of the tranny with the front planetary ring gear installed the overdrive direct clutch drum and it's planetary are installed together. They mesh with the overdrive brake clutch disks. Then the pump is installed over that after replacing the scarf cut sealing rings. Don't force it down as sometimes a sealing ring can catch an edge from getting off center of it's groove and if you force it the ring will break. No bueno. The pump is torqued to the proper spec as well after installing the new large o-ring that surrounds it. Half of the pump perimeter protrudes from the front of the case. This allows easy alignment and centering of the bell housing later.

This is the brand new OEM trans wiring harness. I love new OEM parts very much, it doesn't get much better.
Here is the new harness installed, routed correctly, and connected to the solenoids. the little blue thing that dead ends there at the top is a temp sensor.
New ATP strainer installed and properly torqued.
This sort of goes without saying. Clean the pan. This is where the magnets go. There is another spot at the top left but there isn't a magnet there from the factory and the manual doesn't show one being there either.
The throttle cable needs to be installed before installing the pan.
This is the bell housing installed with the throttle cable from the left clipping on to the vent hose that's RTV'd into the case. The little hump at the top is where the starter engages the flywheel.The burnt discoloration at the right of the bell housing is from extended operation with a leaking EGR tube at some point.

Silent14

Great information and detail in your post.

dicer

So did you use a gasket or ? For the pan.

Banshee365

I did. The one that came with the ATP filter. It seems to be of good quality. I tightened the bolts by feel rather than the factory torque spec as it would deform the pan when using a gasket.

Banshee365

The trans is back in the car and I've driven it a few hundred miles since. It's working great. You can tell by the operation that the sealing internally is much much tighter than it was before. When selecting drive from a neutral range the engagement is nearly instantaneous. It's working really great for a few exceptions, most of which carried over from the failed trans when it was running. I will explain those in a post following this one. For now I'll mention a few things on the install.

There are 6 bolts that fasten the flex plate to the torque converter. Five of them are a gold color and one is a nearly black color. The black one has to be installed first. It has a slight flare near the flange of the bolt to line up the holes. After that one is installed and torqued continue installing the gold ones.

When coming out and going in with the unit you are best removing and installing the lower bolts with the unit all the way in place. For the very top two and even the lower two below that require the trans to be dropped about 2-3" at the rear to allow access with a long 1/2" extension and universal joint.

With a new radiator and totally empty trans and the converter the entire system took about 8.5 quarts of Type-IV to fill.

I suppose that's all I have to say about that. But if anyone can think of any questions I'll have something else to talk about.

This is the simple way that I lower and raise the trans into position. OSHA may not like it but it's plenty stable for me with this unit.
Here are the two types of bolts for the torque converter. You can see the conical part near the lock washer to center the hole of the flex plate to the torque converter.
This is the new Denso radiation. It's made in Taiwan. It's a perfect fit. You have to transfer the coolant temp sensor on the cooling fan circuit from the old radiator to the new one. The only different I noticed was the lower hose connections as slightly longer than the original.
It's a relieving feeling to be pouring the new Type-IV in than fighting with snap rings.

Banshee365

On to the issues. I'll try to keep this concise:

• Harsh engagement into forward gear when warmed up
• Intermittent harsh 2-3 shift
• intermittent harsh 2-1 downshift when coming to a stop
• Stripped exhaust bracket hole in the bell housing I used from another transmission

I can cover the first three in this one paragraph. The first issue with harsh engagement into drive carried over from the trans before it failed. The other two may have been there but it wasn't as noticeable. I believe that this is being caused by high line pressure or accumulator back pressure. When selecting drive the car lurches a little bit and makes the entire driveline thunk a little but. It's not severe but it's not the way it should be. I suspect the pressure hitting the forward clutch drum is too high. There are pressure relief valves built into the valve body to bleed off pressure that could damage anything so it's not a huge problem with that regard. But, I'm going to sort it out. The line pressure is controlled by a mechanical valve and spring in the lower half of the valve body. The spring is calibrated, this is how fuel and oil pressure regulators work as well. I am really not to suspicious of that as I cleaned the valve body and ensured the correct spring, assembly order, and freedom of movement was right. I suspect the accumulator back pressure to be too high. This is controlled by one of the 2 larger of the 4 solenoids. I bench tested them all with a battery but that really doesn't mean jack. This solenoid is proportional. I suspect it is sticking or most of the time not even working. I do not have any MIL's, again that really doesn't mean anything. I reused the solenoids and valve body from the trans that failed.

From this point I think I'm going to get me a nice line pressure gauge set and diagnose the unit without even dropping the pan. This unit has a main line pressure tap at the front of the case and an accumulator pressure tap at the rear of the case. Pressures can be observed here while operating the unit in certain ways and watching the pressure reaction. Since I suspect there to be a problem with the accumulator back pressure I'm going to focus most of my attention at the rear port, after checking the main line pressure first of course. The procedure to real world test the solenoid's functioning ability is to warm the trans to operating temp then ground the accumulator back pressure regulator solenoid right from the ECM connector. When you send the solenoid to ground it should dump all of the accumulator back pressure. This will cause the gauge to drop to zero. The computer modulates the solenoid via duty cycle control I'm guessing. Shorting it to ground SHOULD send it wide open. I have a feeling the pressure isn't going to change without tapping it to ground multiple times to sort of jar it open. That may do it intermittently. What a normal person with 2 other piles of parts like I have would do is drop the pan and install a different set of solenoids and drive it, but what fun is that?

I used a bell housing from one of the other units for some reason. I really don't have a reason... I didn't know one of the holes for the exhaust bracket was stripped, but it is. So really the exhaust is being fastened to the trans by one of the bolts, which is fine really. But, I like things to be perfect so I'm going to fix it. You may say, "Dude, you have two other bell housings. Just swap one of those in..." Yea, and remove the trans from the car along with the converter? Nope. Not unless I have to. By method of thread repair to use the original fastener is locking thread inserts. I don't like helicoils because they can back out with the fastener when removing them. Time-serts are a pretty expensive endeavor for one hole but they are nice as well. For stripped aluminum holes I use the locking inserts. The hole drilled out, tapped with the outside thread of the insert, the insert is install, and the stakes are driven down next to the insert to lock it in place. You can get the inserts in stainless or black oxide. I just use the black oxide. I use these to fix stripped trans pan bolt holes and they really work great. The bolt for the exhaust bracket is an M10 and the insert has an M14 outer thread.

Yotarip

Good work,
I put together a A340/ A341 hybrid for the 1uz swap in my 90 cressida. Works great. I also helped a freind swap a 94 ls400 trans into his 96 ls400. It was a direct swap. I thought he would atleast have to swap out the valve body but he didn't. Still works perfectly three years later.

These trans aren't that bad to rebuild if you're patient and pay attention to detail.

Banshee365

Yea, I don't think they're bad at all. Nicely engineered and machined units.

Granite88

Glad to hear that its working well overall, even though it seems you have a few smaller things to figure out to make it perfect!

You mentioned above about the near instant drive or reverse engagement from a neutral range- thats awesome because thats how my transmission acts when I go from any neutral gear to a drive gear no matter hot or cold.

I got 4 quarts of OEM Toyota type 4 atf, a wix trans filter and a new rubber gasket. Plan to do my service in the next month or so when it warms up a little more up here. I don't think it will make my already perfect acting transmission act any better- but hope it extends its life for a good long while. Certainly can't hurt anything!

DVL5WRK95

Bumping up an old post to add a little info. My ‘95 LS400 uses an a341e trans. When ordering new solenoids, the a340e brackets didn’t fit for the a341, and neither did the transmission filter. I had to order another kit for the a341e I order to replace my shift solenoids and the trans filter, as the a340e didn’t fit either. Figured this might help save some time.

Sin1UZFE

My new to me tranny has a valve body that sounds like a vacuum cleaner when on.....shifts just fine otherwise. Any ideas on what to do?

sdls

Ha. Funny story.

I thought the 260,000 mile trans in my '96 was dying. It whined in 1st and 2nd gear and there was a little bit of rough shifting occasionally in stop and go traffic.
So I bought a trans from eBay from a junkyard in kan-tuckee. And didn't install it for about six months.
AFTER I bolted it into the car, I drained it and was amazed to see how much WATER came out of it (no idea where it came from), and milkshakey material. I shrugged, installed a new trans filter and went on a really short drive.
About 1600 feet from the home, the car stopped moving and started freewheeling the motor. Aw #@%#@%@#%
After the worlds shortest tow home (It had to go up some stupid hill) I dropped the trans pan and saw that the filter was clogged to #@%#%!@$
I bought a new filter from Advance or something, put some hard drive magnets in the pan and drove it for a short while (like less than 400 feet) before I brought it back to the driveway and dropped the pan again. Yeah, full of crap again. So I changed the filter once more and bought like 4 $6.00 trans filters from RockAuto so that I wouldn't empty my bank account out on brick and mortar store filters.
About two filter changes later, pan drops showed that material wasn't accumulating on the screen like it used to. Success! And it stood up to the rigors of a Vortech supercharger, to boot.
So I drove the car for a few years this way until the trans started freewheeling again. (this time it was caused by a fluid leak... long story, but the damage was done when the driver kept revving the motor instead of shutting it down.) Uh oh. And no filter changing would save it this time.
Somehow, miraculously, the old trans was still in the garage collecting dust. So I installed it and voila... the car ran again. With the original trans, which outlived the junkyard trans. The car is still running today (I'm sure) on the original trans, with its 1st and 2nd gear noise.... still working.

Moral of the story is... if your trans screen clogs up with junk, you're on borrowed time. OP said maybe a few hundred miles. In my case it was about 10,000 miles and two years, after three filter changes and lots of drain/fill cycles, but it was borrowed time nonetheless.

Edit: I remember I also installed a Magnefine inline filter. They were also stupid cheap on RockAuto back in 2010, like $3.00 each! So that probably helped... maybe? Ha