[Shotimes] (OT) Old GM Trannies...was: Park vs. Forward (was Autolock and MTX)

[George Fourchy]

On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 06:58:58 -0600, Donald Mallinson wrote:

>Also, just as a point of history, the PRNDL format has not 
>always been the same.
>
>in the early days of automatics, GM used this format:  PNDLR

We had all Buicks from 1953 to 1968, when I convinced my dad to get the M/T Car of
the Year, a GTO.  (Prior to that, in my 'dark ages', they had Plymouths.)  The
Buicks all had PNDLR.  It took a while for my parents to get used to the different
shift pattern...the GTO had a TH350 and a dual gate shifter on the console, with the
standard PRND21 pattern.

My dad also had one Ford, a '61 Tbird.  (We also had a '63 F100....it was good.)  It
had the swing-away steering column, with the early C-6 Cruise-o-Matic tranny.  Its
pattern was P R N D2 D1 L.  He was totally amazed one day when I inadvertently
bumped the shift lever at speed, moving it from D1 to D2 (no detent between those
two).  He always thought it would pop down to 2nd gear.   He yelled at me, and I had
to explain it to him!  LOL!!  That car wasn't a good overall experience, since they
required a specific break-in period back then, and that one was a dealer demo, and
had been abused.  It burned oil bad, from new.  But he was proud of it for a few
years.  We traded it for the GTO.

The '65 Mustang convertible I gave away last fall originally came with a C-4, with
the same pattern.  It was a pain in the neck coming down steep hills, not being able
to select 2nd gear for braking and have it stay there....if the shifter went to L,
for max engine braking, it would pop into first at a predetermined speed.  Later,
the Select-Shift Cruise-O-Matic fixed that.  I retrofitted the select shift valve
body onto that earlier C-4 and it worked fine.  I still have the tranny....anyone
interested?  It's perfect, with a newish torque converter.

Memories......the fastest Buick we had was a '56 Roadmaster 4 door.  It was a
monster.  The overall neatest one was the '63 LeSabre 2Door HT.  Red with red
interior.  I got to pick the color!!  I was a Junior in HS.  It had a bench seat,
which hurt all our backs, but other than that it was cool....had a slight rake from
the factory, and really went down the road nice.  It didn't last as long as the
others...it blew a head gasket, and we traded it for a '67 Riviera.  That was an
amazing car....almost as fast, yet got 25 mpg.  It lasted well past 150K miles with
us, then with a friend of mine.

I wasn't aware of big engines vs little ones yet, so I didn't ask why the '56 was so
much faster than the '57 we had, which looked nicer.  I thought the transmission was
smaller in the '57, not realizing they were probably the same tranny.

The folks wanted to get the '63 because that was the last year of Dynaflow
transmissions for Buick.

I learned how to adjust accelerator pumps with the '63, but didn't know about head
gaskets yet.  It would have been easy to fix, with all the room under those hoods. 
Those old Buicks were neat, in retrospect.  Stripped of options like we have now,
but still neat!!

There's a lot more to talk about and remember, but this is long enough....

;-)

I still have one of them, the '63 Riviera my aunt bought new.  It's for sale, in
great shape.

George