Other than not knowing ANYTHING about automatic transmissions, this class has been great so far! Since most people learn "hands-on" better than other learning methods, this has been the main focus of our class. If you want a fancy term for hands-on, just say "experiential learning!" As a great example of this, here's how our first week went.
One of the valve body gaskets. |
The first two days were in the classroom, and this was to learn the names of all the parts and the basic theory on how these crazy things work. During this time our instructors would talk about a part of the transmission, then grab one from a table and show it to us. This is a very effective thing to do, and way better than just looking at a photo of the parts in a book.
Clamped on the table and rotated to drain a bit more oil out, it's time to start taking this apart. Good view of the transmission fluid pan that has a built-in filter. |
For my group, we have a 1996 Chevy Silverado. We were just about ready to pull it out at the end of that first class (ok, it's a three-hour class) but we were advised to get it first thing the next day, just so that we wouldn't be rushing to finish and make a big mistake. Not wanting to drop an entire transmission and damage it, this was great advice!
The cover is off the valve body, and we keep tearing it down. The lights on the power wrench make it look mean! |
So ok, after two days in the classroom, plus about 3.5 hours of work, we had our transmission pulled out and sitting on a table. The next 2.5 hours was about how long it took to disassemble the transmission, inspect the parts, and for the teacher to order the replacement parts that we needed. We were feeling really good about getting this thing broken down pretty quickly, but then we were reminded that we'd only done the easy part of the job, since it would likely take us a full week to put it all back together. Oh well!
In all my other classes so far, we'd dealt with simple stuff you work on regularly like brake pads, headlights, and an oil change. Getting those parts from a dealership or your local parts store is easy, because you can probably find it in stock right now. With our school's business accounts, I've seen parts get ordered online or on the phone and get delivered the same day almost as fast as a pizza! The only difference is that car parts are not as delicious!
Some of the parts go in the Viper-Jet washer. They came out looking much better! |
After the cleaning and starting to reassemble with new clutch packs, gaskets, seals, etc. as needed. |
But with our transmission internals, these parts get ordered from a specialty shop in Charlotte and generally take maybe 24 hours. This isn't really a big deal, because I'm sure there's other projects for us to work on, or homework to do. Hey, stay tuned for more Automatic Transmission class, and hopefully next time we'll have this job all done with everything working great!
New parts |
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