Quote Originally Posted by buck View Post
They dont call them traumatic for nothing, my dad had a 308 with traumatic when new, (1979) blew up in 40,000klm and replaced under warranty at extra cost with a stato turbo 350 i think, did 400,000klm no problems.
every person i have known with a traumatic has blown it up and they dont seem to be able to fix them properly for long term use, i have a m20 4 speed which has been rebuilt twice in 200,000klm quiet normal my mechanic says they are just weak as piss in the bearings.
The cluster and layshaft (and the needles rollers) used to start losing their case hardening after about 100K - normal. On the other side of that I have seen Trimatics go for over 140,000 miles (220,000+km) without a rebuild as long at they were serviced regularly and not driven hard all the time. Thrash something (standard) and you'll break it, it is as simple as that. I can't imaging your father was easy on it or even had the auto serviced for it to "break" that quickly. A well built trimatic is well capable of handling 350-400hp very reliably and for a very long time.

No trimatic was ever replaced by a TH350 under warranty in a GMH dealership... Steve Dunne-Contant would have rejected the claim outright. Different engine blocks for starters. It wont fit, the selectors are all different, the tailshaft is different, the speedo drives are most probably different, etc etc. So they changed the engine as well? I doubt that very, very much. If it was done at all it would have been a full retail job, or probably done external to the dealership by your old man.