Figured I'd stop in and share my recent experience w/ you good people .. Got an 01 blazer 4wd 4dr. W/ 104k miles on it .. Bought it w/ 73k fall of 2011 .. Clean body 1 owner but didn't know maintenance history so immediately did all fluids including tranny purge and fill, had this done at a dealership! I just don't have an interest in wrenching on cars so I've been using a damn good local mechanic that I'm comfortable with .. Been diligent with all maintenance thinking if I'm good to it, it'll be good to me .. WRONG! .. Have had to do front end, radiator, brakes, brake lines, brake backing plates meaning had to drop the rear end and do all the " while where in there " stuff. Frozen calipers metal to metal rotors the list goes on .... Last fall got new 16" wheels wrapped w/ bfg long trail ta's and did bilsteins all around at the same time .. Truck was running like a champ w/ k&n fipk and hypertech 93 octane tune programmed w/ 50% firmer shifts left the rest stock .. Fast forward to the past week I drove from mass. To cleveland to visit some family made it no problem except I noticed the cruise control didn't wanna engage, well got to Cleveland went to put it in reverse to back up a hill and boom! No reverse 2 or 4 .. Yep the sun shell which I only learned of now is a common problem with these rigs .. Having to get back to work in ma and not knowing anybody out here in oh. I brought it to aamco on Saturday morning just got it back at end of day today ( Wednesday) .. They rebuilt it for $2100 and used the monster sunshell instead of the beast not sure what the difference is .. Moral to the story is if ur gonna have a blazer you better have an emergency fund

 

yeah, tranny problems ALWAYS hurt. there was one thing that i learned with my old 89 S-15 pickup though....

i had this clicking noise when it was running. had a friend listen to it, he has 22 ASE certs, he said that it might be a bad fly wheel. alright i said. i pulled the motor myself which i had done about 3 times fighting an oil leak. anyway, fly wheel looked good. talked to another mechanic, that i work for, and he jumped in the engine bay and spun the torque converter. and there was the click i was hearing. or so i thought. i pulled the trans and had it rebuilt and got a new converter. about $1500 good-guy price later i had a new-er trans. put it all back together with a new fly wheel and fired it up. the click was back. several curse words later i pulled the starter off and had that rebuilt. no more click.

it was the starter the whole time. the trans wasnt in the best of shape, but i figured i was going to have the truck for a while. so no biggie. but i spend 1500+ to fix a noise that would have only cost me about 45 had i dont a little more diagnosing. i feel your pain about needing an emergency fund!

 

Yup, fluid and filter needs to be changed every 36K miles. A "purge" or "fluid exchange" is NOT a good idea, and may have triggered your sun reaction shell failure. I service several 4L60E's: 3 of the "high milers" have 220K, 286K and 387K, all with 36K changes, all are original transmissions, never been apart. "The beast" is the answer though, if it breaks, the transmission has been abused... too many hole shots, not completely stopping before changing from R to D or D to R, etc.

 

$2100 for a rebuild on the road isn't a bad deal with the beefed up sun shell. So don't feel too bad about it.

I just had mine rebuilt locally before it gave out on me. Added in a Beast sun shell and shift kit plus a peek in the transfer case to make sure all was alright. Spent, what I feel, was a very good investment of $2200 after 223K miles. And I still plan on keeping it since buying it new almost 13 years ago. Soon to come will either be an engine rebuild or replacement, before it goes out on me.

 

What affect does a shift kit have? Can it be accomplished without 1 but use the firmer shift option thru the hypertech programmer? Also, I reprogrammed it back to stock prior to bringing in for tranny rebuild and have only driven it a few miles since .. Would it be wise to break it in a little before I go back to 93 octane program with firmer shifts??