Fuel V3 + Tuning & Transmission Woes - 05/06/2013

As I eluded to several pages back, I'd been noticing that my fuel pressure has been bouncing around a bit. I discuss this in greater length in this thread, if you're interested. Thinking the issue was solved, I proceeded to self tune the car over a process of ~5 months. During the tuning process I continuously felt like I was shooting at moving targets and I continued to suspect and see fluctuations in my fuel pressure. This is discussed at length here.

Ultimately, the source of my fuel pressure troubles turned out to be a chunk of epoxy / plastic that found its way inside my gas tank and it was fluttering in my sump's outlet port. Luckily, I found this while draining the tank for more debugging / fuel system changes. The piece of plastic can be seen in the pictures below. After the discovery, the final version of my fuel system emerged bringing the best of the previous versions together.


Another set of issues I've been dealing with has been coming from my "freshly rebuilt" T56 transmission. The problems included:

Grinding when shifting to 2nd and sometimes when shifting to 3rd. This usually happens during fast acceleration.

Dropping out of gear when in 3rd and 5th. I.E., the lever pops out of gear and returns to neutral.

Internal catching / binding. This one is the most mysterious and concerning. The car will sometimes lurch / roll forward ~1/2" when in neutral, clutch out, and parking brake off. The lurch also makes the idle rpms dip. The binding has also shown itself at very low speeds in 1st and reverse. For example, I'll be driving into a parking spot or backing out of it and the car will bind up 2 or 3 times which shakes/rattles the shifter and noticeably brakes the car. I eliminated the differential and the brakes as causing this problem before blaming the transmission.


This was also detailed in further length here. The decision was made to remove the transmission to get a closer look at it. Once pulled, my untrained eyes couldn't detect any major problems so I started looking around for help I could outsource. That's when I started trying to contact Tick Performance.

I've known of them as a competent albeit expensive T56 rebuilder, but I was willing to pay the price for good work. However, they lost ~$1.6k of business over 2 weeks of non existent communication. I spent days calling and using their websites contact form before I resorted to using LS1tech's PM system to try and message a few of the Tick Performance Employee / Members. Finally I re-activated my facebook account and messaged them through their official page. Low and behold I got a response via facebook after a week. It was a brief message saying they were sorry they'd missed my other attempts at contact and that they would like to help me. I replied back saying I was interested and gave all my contact info. After that I got nothing. I tried every method I had at my disposal for another week. Afterwards I was furious that such a established business had such non existent communication, so I vowed they wouldn't get a penny of my money. I mean, I understand if you've got too much business to take on new business (and even wrote them that), but to act like I don't even exist really grinds my gears :( 

Enter Texas Driveline Performance. Their prices and rep beat Tick Performance's prices and rep all day long. Matt and Jason have instantly replied or called me back and got everything setup + a UPS pickup scheduled in no time flat!