I've pulled the trigger on a 4L65E rebuild. It's going to be a little beefier than stock, but not by much. The next level up was a $900 increase... I suggested to my builder that the $900 wasn't in my budget and upgrading me for free was likely not conducive to paying his bills and he agreed...
While he's in there... He's replacing my rear main seal, and I am waiting on an estimate to replace the pan gasket. You have to pull the transmission and transfer case for both repairs...
Now, firstly, I want to thank everyone that responded, especially
@strutaeng for mentioning gearvendors,
@acesttz for mentioning True Blue Motorsports, and
@drdave81 and
@strutaeng for mentioning performancetrucks.net. That said, I appreciate everyone throwing the brakes on to help prevent me from doing something stupid. But it is frustrating to ask for information and simply told it is a bad idea. It is much *less* frustrating for people to offer up information where people have considered/tried to do it and gave up or failed. To that end, I'm adding what I found in case anyone else tries to look into this, so they will know what they are up against:
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The 6Lxx transmission were different than to 4Lxx transmissions in that the transmission controls were actually built into the 6Lxx transmissions. That meant that using a standalone transmission controller was almost impossible, because it would still need to talk to the TCM *in* the 6Lxx.
The 8Lxx and 10Lxx were problematic -- as replacements for the 4Lxx -- because they, too, had their own, separate transmission control modules (TCM). This mean R&D had to be invested in deciphering how their TCM's worked so there could be translation between the year models for which they were made, and the year models for which the 4Lxx were made. As of this update, there is a company out of Houston, Texas that will do the conversion for GMT900s, but not the GMT800s. There was a commentator on the installer's FB page saying the GMT800s were for the "poors" or close enough. So I suspect these guys are never going to build a standalone controller for the GMT800s.
Ultimately, as others have said, anything is possible if you spend enough time and money. But my time was in short supply this go-around, even though I did have *some* coin to spend. So I've got a built 4L65E, or will have in a couple of days.
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truebluemotorsport.com
