Last summer, I went thru a Powerglide for a friend of a friend. This was a street car transmission, in a 63 Impala convertible with hydraulics. Definitely not my usual clientele!!

The transmission was completely functional, but had a nasty whine in first gear. The autopsy revealed a planetary gearset with some severely worn pinions and thrust washers. The nice thing with 1.82 gearsets is the ability to rebuild them. Once the gearset was rebuilt, the rest of the rebuild went normally.

Imagine my surprise when after install, the trans refused to shift. I inspected the valve body, thinking I had used the wrong gaskets, or installed something wrong. Couldn’t find the issue. I put a pressure gauge on the governor port, zero gov pressure. As far as the transmission was concerned, the car never moved regardless of actual speed. I swapped governors, nothing changed. I finally figured it out, the governor support gasket had no holes for governor supply or pressure. I cut holes for the pressure ports, everything was fine.

Since Coan is local to me, that’s where I bought the parts to fix it. Coan is a performance transmission/converter company, and race cars don’t use governors, I assumed at the time the gasket kit was tailored to the race environment.

I just finished another street performance type Powerglide build. This time, I specifically ordered a rebuild kit from a “civilian” type supplier. Imagine my surprise to find the govenor support gasket once again without the holes. Apparently, none of the gaskets include those holes.

This is the govenor support. The circled holes are the supply and signal passages.

This is the support, with the gasket on it. No holes.


These are the kinds of things you hopefully screw up ONCE.

 

Wow that's weird..

 

I had an unopened gasket kit from Hughes, the governor support does t have those holes either.

If the gasket company doesn’t want to include the holes, that’s fine, just say something. I’m guessing the vast majority of Powerglide gasket kits sold today are being used in race cars that don’t use governors. But it would t be a bad idea to include some literature explaining the holes need to be added for an automatic shift application.

 

Matt, I thought the V-8 PG's used a 1.76 low gear.

 

I know the big blocks got a 1.76 gearset, a puny 283 2 barrel would be just fine with a 1.82.

Technically, the 1.76 gearset is also rebuildable. The gearset pins are dimpled on one to prevent them from coming out. You have to press the pins out, clean, rebuild the gearsets, reinstall, and then weld the pins so they don’t come out again. The 1.82 sets have a bolt in retainer.