727 Disassembly and Advice

j par said
Lately I've been using a little brass wire wheel on a dremmel for little cleanup jobs that I don't want to get to much material off...
It looks like condensation moisture likely got into it...
On my last transmission, where I got one from a guy... blah blah blah and I went to rebuild it. It had some rust issues like that inside from being in an outdoor shed... Just getting through the heat and cold cycles and moisture...
Anyways, definitely, without question. Pull the pump apart on the front of the transmission that you pulled out first...
There is extremely tight tolerances in there, and if those gears get moisture and rust on them and go uncleaned unlubricated and unfreed. It's likely you'll snap the snout off your torque converter at the first turn of the key... if it moves at all... l o l..
I was glad I opened mine.. as soon as I did I said to myself that's not good.... watch the videos, on scribing them and things like that to get them back where they were..

Took a look inside, luckily nothing like the outside rust I've got on the drums. There was some of that loose gunk here or there but it all moved pretty freely. and looked clean thankfully.

j par said
Definitely. If you just put new clutches, new steels and your lip seals and stuff like that and clean everything out, put everything back exactly the way you had it. You're probably gonna have quite a healthy transmission for a long time. These are known to be the easiest transmissions. And have great longevity with just a simple rebuild... as far as bushings go, i've gotten away with just putting a front and rear ones in that you don't need super special tools for.. They're the outside ones that generally carry a lot of the loads and are more susceptible to contamination, because they're closest to the outside...
I've just never seen any bad scoring or wear on the inside bushings.... in the four or five that i've done...
Oh, yeah. I commend you for doing this as well. It's really amazes me that there are so many people that have this hobby and are scared of things like this. And really, when they've got and gone through, you can find out how pretty simple it is, it's very very very old technology..

I'll be looking at new clutches, just not sure which ones to get. I've read that you can mix and match to get the right clearance, so if I get some thicker ones I can throw those in, perhaps it'll work with 4 thicker ones rather than 5 slimmer, but we'll have to see. All of the steels were clean, they had no discoloration, but they did all have a very loose circular sanding pattern, like a jitterbug barely went over them. I've seen people take scotchbrite to take the shine off of them for better grip, so I'll likely do that. The inner bushings looked solid, couldn't see or feel any grooves, so those should be fine.

It is definitely interesting getting into this, I didn't expect to be tearing into a transmission and swapping them around on this project but seeing that a core was $400, and a rebuilt was $1800, I figured I'd take my chances and learn a thing or two.

So far it's looking like I'm going to be getting the front servo larger spring, a full seal and gasket kit, some new clutch plates and steels, some Evaporust, and possibly a spring on the accumulator. I've not dug into the valve body just yet so we'll see if that brings any other surprises. I've read that there are slightly different plates that separate the valve body top and bottom, and they are stamped with 3 numbers. Is there a reference anywhere to see what these differences are? Or are the differences so minute it's not really worth looking at?