Ill tell you a story, and let me me say this about Performabuilt- their warranty is awesome. Unknown to me, you should never use RTV on the pan gasket. It plugs up the servo passages so the fluid doesn’t drain and they don’t release right which causes extremely hard shifts and is real rough on the hard parts. Now, be aware the 1-2 shift on a level 3 is pretty damn hard to begin with so I didn’t really think about it but in hindsight it was REALLY hard after the fluid/ filter change. The warranty requires a fluid and filter change after break-in and a couple months after I did that the first time, I was racing a Subaru WRX off the line and when it hit second it grenaded. I sent it in under warranty and when they opened it up they didn’t catch the fact the passages were plugged I guess, and they called me and said the internals had a lot of damage and didn’t make sense but it looked like the converter had been banging into the input shaft ( there were dents in the end of the input shaft which I figured out later must have been there on the original core trans before they built it) so my thrust bearing on the engine must be bad, causing the crank to move back and forth. I bought a dial caliper and the thrust bearing checked out fine, so that failure remained a mystery st the time. Then over a year later, a couple months after I did the fluid/filter on the warranty unit, once again on a WOT launch it broke again on the 1-2 shift. It was out of warranty this time. This time Ryan called me and emailed pics of the output shaft. It was a twist break on it. The damn output shaft had twisted until it snapped. He sent pics of the RTV in the servo passages. He asked if it had been shifting really hard and I said hell yes, like REALLY hard. He explained that when the servos can’t drain, they don’t release and this creates a lot of shock on all the hard parts and this us likely why it broke both times. They must not have caught that the first time. They covered it under warranty anyway, even though it was my fault and even though it was 6 months out of warranty. This last time they also changed a spring in it so the 1-2 shift isn’t so harsh. I’m not running it on the drag strip and I asked if they could help that. It used to make the truck shake pretty hard before, even before I messed things up and made it even more harsh. So I have nothing but good things to say about them. That last time I was even willing to upgrade to the Black Edition but Ryan told me I didn’t need to spend that money, he was sure the Level 3 would not break again unless I plug up those passages, and if I do even the Black will break. All it’s cost me is shipping to them both times, about $100 both times. They paid to ship it back and rebuilt it for feee both times. Lesson learned for me. And I don’t think anybody else would have covered it.
but everything fits back together. Anyway all was well until tonight and the front window switches went dark again. I opened it and found that bulb was melted inside the diffuser. Weird. Not sure what that was about but I had bought spares so I replaced it again. Back in business.
