200R4 Trans kick down in 71 Cutlass
October 16th, 2013, 06:49 AM
#1
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Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Richfield, Ohio
Posts: 66
200R4 Trans kick down in 71 Cutlass
We put an 86 Monte Carlo transmission in our 71 Cutlass for the overdrive, does anyone know how this trans kick down operates? Is it an electrical switch attached to the gas pedal, or a cable? There are some wires on the drivers side of the trans, maybe for the kick down or lock up torque converter or maybe both.
Thank you to anyone that can give us some direction with this. We are using a Q-Jet carb if that matters.
Mark
Thank you to anyone that can give us some direction with this. We are using a Q-Jet carb if that matters.
Mark
October 16th, 2013, 07:52 AM
#2
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Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Omaha, NE
Posts: 204
The electrical connection on the drivers side is in fact for the torque converter lockup. As far as the "kickdown" on these transmissions you'd be talking about the TV Cable. This performs far more than kickdown on the transmission, it controls shift points, and pressure also basically acting as the brains of the whole operation. Proper TV geometry and alignment is critical, make sure you do your research or your new transmission won't last far past the first test drive. There are options for your quadrajet, do a little searching for the inginuity that others have used to adapt the bracket from an original quadrajet from a 2004r carb to your current carb. I'm running an edelbrock carb with a TV Made EZ kit from Bowtie overdrives to control mine, they also make a kit for the quadrajet, but only for Chevy quadrajets, won't fit Olds. Either way, good luck.
October 16th, 2013, 10:43 AM
#3
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Gilbert, Arizona
Posts: 484
Snoop around on the BowtiesOverdrive site, you'll find a lot of crucial information, Do not drive it until you have the TV (throttle Valve) cable set up properly or you will ruin the 200-4R in short order!
October 16th, 2013, 10:48 AM
#4
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Gilbert, Arizona
Posts: 484
Here's a writeup I posted awhile back on doing a 200-4R swap;
In many cases, when buying a beefed up rebuilt transmission it will not come with the fill tube, so a universal dipstick/fill tube needs to be installed. A properly calibrated stick will have the full mark on the stick be equal to the bottom edge of the transmission case. The lock up torque converter might need to be shimmed, as was in my case, to get the proper distance in relation to the flex plate (1/4” away maximum). Under no circumstance should the torque converter bolts touch the converter shell when tightened down! Put a qt of ATF in the converter and take you time indexing it into the trans. It has to engage the front pump properly.
The cross member will be moved back, no big deal, the holes are already there, but I also had to notch it in a couple of places. The very farthest back pan bolt of the 200-4R tranny is very difficult to get a socket on to r&r the pan because the bolt is right under the cross member lip, by making a u-shaped notch in the cross member, makes it easier to get to the pan bolt. Also, if your exhaust pipes tip in toward the middle to soon, they can hit the crossmember, requiring more notch work for clearance or a new exhaust pipe. A muffler shop had made my drivers side pipe, it was to close, so a bit of clearance was needed in the crossmember to prevent possible interference, or have your muffler shop redo the pipe.
A bit of parking brake cable work is also needed to make up for the extra slack that comes with moving the crossmember back. I drilled a new hole in the cross member so I could move the hook (that holds one side of the intermediate cable) farther to the outside to take up most of the slack, alternatively using cables for the 400turbo trans will work fine.
The cooling lines seem to line up fairly well, the top outlet is the pressure fitting, bottom the return. No driveshaft work was needed. There is also a floor shifter kit available that allows the manual use of all four gears, it requires the removal of the console assembly to replace the index plate, cable and shift indicator plate. The new plate is marked; P R N (D) D 2 1. The new index plate is needed to properly hold the shifter in the new added position of the overdrive gear. The kit also comes with a new needed transmission end cable bracket. Don’t forget to re-adjust the backup light/neutral switch while the console is out. Not a huge job, the console work, but time consuming. It all seemed to fit nicely, though the cable seems like it should have been a few inches shorter, but then again the stock cable seemed that way also. It’s very important that the click stops in the tranny match the stops of the console shifter index plate, it required a bit of fiddling and adjusting to get the trans click stops, indicator shifter lever and lever index plate stops to all match up.
Biggest pain in the neck was the very critical TV (throttle valve ) cable setup, If you use the stock Olds Qjet, here’s the problem, the stock Olds intake manifold has the Qjet carb sitting rather low, thus the bottom part of the throttle arm does not extend down far enough for a proper TV cable hook up with an Olds carb. I tinkered with it the better part of a day before I realized the stock Olds carb linkage wasn’t going to work with the TV cable adapter and universal cable that was supplied by Bowtie. But because I’m using an Edelbrock Performer RPM manifold , there is lots of room below the carb, so I bought a junk Chebby Qjet from the mid 80’s (Ebay) and used its throttle arm by grinding off the swedged on arm, off both the stock carb and Chebby carb and swapping them. Then by using one of the two available custom adapters from Bowtie Overdrives for the Qjet which includes a carb spacer plate that has the proper cable bracket built into it, and a matching TV cable, I was able to be set up the TV system without any problem. There are 2 styles used, of course they sent the wrong one (cable and plate) the first time. The TV cable has to be setup so there never is any slack in the cable at slow idle and there should be an instant pressure rise with any movement of the throttle arm, also the spool valve the cable controls has to be buried all the way in the valve body at the full throttle position to allow for proper downshifting.
The last hurdle was hooking up the torque converter lock up dis-connect switch. A keyed hot terminal wired thru a relay controlled by the brake switch and then run to the transmission. It was not too difficult. I don’t know yet if I’m going to need lockup delay kit or not.
With this tranny, with 3.42 gears at 80 mph cruising speed in fourth gear, I saw a big difference from the 3100 rpm previously down to about 2100 rpm with the engine just loafing along in overdrive. The fourth gear in a 200-4R is a .67 ratio, so RPMs drop by a third, plus first gear is also a bit lower, 2.74 compared to the 350 turbo 2.52 low gear. I would also recommend an external tranny cooler after the fluid leaves the stock radiator cooler.
In many cases, when buying a beefed up rebuilt transmission it will not come with the fill tube, so a universal dipstick/fill tube needs to be installed. A properly calibrated stick will have the full mark on the stick be equal to the bottom edge of the transmission case. The lock up torque converter might need to be shimmed, as was in my case, to get the proper distance in relation to the flex plate (1/4” away maximum). Under no circumstance should the torque converter bolts touch the converter shell when tightened down! Put a qt of ATF in the converter and take you time indexing it into the trans. It has to engage the front pump properly.
The cross member will be moved back, no big deal, the holes are already there, but I also had to notch it in a couple of places. The very farthest back pan bolt of the 200-4R tranny is very difficult to get a socket on to r&r the pan because the bolt is right under the cross member lip, by making a u-shaped notch in the cross member, makes it easier to get to the pan bolt. Also, if your exhaust pipes tip in toward the middle to soon, they can hit the crossmember, requiring more notch work for clearance or a new exhaust pipe. A muffler shop had made my drivers side pipe, it was to close, so a bit of clearance was needed in the crossmember to prevent possible interference, or have your muffler shop redo the pipe.
A bit of parking brake cable work is also needed to make up for the extra slack that comes with moving the crossmember back. I drilled a new hole in the cross member so I could move the hook (that holds one side of the intermediate cable) farther to the outside to take up most of the slack, alternatively using cables for the 400turbo trans will work fine.
The cooling lines seem to line up fairly well, the top outlet is the pressure fitting, bottom the return. No driveshaft work was needed. There is also a floor shifter kit available that allows the manual use of all four gears, it requires the removal of the console assembly to replace the index plate, cable and shift indicator plate. The new plate is marked; P R N (D) D 2 1. The new index plate is needed to properly hold the shifter in the new added position of the overdrive gear. The kit also comes with a new needed transmission end cable bracket. Don’t forget to re-adjust the backup light/neutral switch while the console is out. Not a huge job, the console work, but time consuming. It all seemed to fit nicely, though the cable seems like it should have been a few inches shorter, but then again the stock cable seemed that way also. It’s very important that the click stops in the tranny match the stops of the console shifter index plate, it required a bit of fiddling and adjusting to get the trans click stops, indicator shifter lever and lever index plate stops to all match up.
Biggest pain in the neck was the very critical TV (throttle valve ) cable setup, If you use the stock Olds Qjet, here’s the problem, the stock Olds intake manifold has the Qjet carb sitting rather low, thus the bottom part of the throttle arm does not extend down far enough for a proper TV cable hook up with an Olds carb. I tinkered with it the better part of a day before I realized the stock Olds carb linkage wasn’t going to work with the TV cable adapter and universal cable that was supplied by Bowtie. But because I’m using an Edelbrock Performer RPM manifold , there is lots of room below the carb, so I bought a junk Chebby Qjet from the mid 80’s (Ebay) and used its throttle arm by grinding off the swedged on arm, off both the stock carb and Chebby carb and swapping them. Then by using one of the two available custom adapters from Bowtie Overdrives for the Qjet which includes a carb spacer plate that has the proper cable bracket built into it, and a matching TV cable, I was able to be set up the TV system without any problem. There are 2 styles used, of course they sent the wrong one (cable and plate) the first time. The TV cable has to be setup so there never is any slack in the cable at slow idle and there should be an instant pressure rise with any movement of the throttle arm, also the spool valve the cable controls has to be buried all the way in the valve body at the full throttle position to allow for proper downshifting.
The last hurdle was hooking up the torque converter lock up dis-connect switch. A keyed hot terminal wired thru a relay controlled by the brake switch and then run to the transmission. It was not too difficult. I don’t know yet if I’m going to need lockup delay kit or not.
With this tranny, with 3.42 gears at 80 mph cruising speed in fourth gear, I saw a big difference from the 3100 rpm previously down to about 2100 rpm with the engine just loafing along in overdrive. The fourth gear in a 200-4R is a .67 ratio, so RPMs drop by a third, plus first gear is also a bit lower, 2.74 compared to the 350 turbo 2.52 low gear. I would also recommend an external tranny cooler after the fluid leaves the stock radiator cooler.
October 16th, 2013, 03:41 PM
#6
Registered User
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Boise ID
Posts: 1,275
The electrical connection on the drivers side is in fact for the torque converter lockup. As far as the "kickdown" on these transmissions you'd be talking about the TV Cable. This performs far more than kickdown on the transmission, it controls shift points, and pressure also basically acting as the brains of the whole operation. Proper TV geometry and alignment is critical, make sure you do your research or your new transmission won't last far past the first test drive. There are options for your quadrajet, do a little searching for the inginuity that others have used to adapt the bracket from an original quadrajet from a 2004r carb to your current carb. I'm running an edelbrock carb with a TV Made EZ kit from Bowtie overdrives to control mine, they also make a kit for the quadrajet, but only for Chevy quadrajets, won't fit Olds. Either way, good luck.
Last edited by jag1886; October 16th, 2013 at 03:45 PM.
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