In article >,
"C. E. White" > wrote:

> You have to be kidding.

Let's see:

'70s Vega (Turbo 350) - 150,000+ miles.
'87 Celebrity Wagon (towed with it!) - 225,000 miles.
And that's just cars I've been in. plenty of friend who've not blown up
transmissions in GM cars.

> The crap they iunstall in Tahoes is just an explosion waiting to happen.

Look how SUV owners drive! 80mph, fully overloaded, with 5 supersized
adults, in 90 degree weather, with th A/C on. I see tons of
'invinceable' SUVs stuck by the side of the road in the summer, almost
always an overheat. I won't even go into parking. 99% of the American
public does NOT know how to properly park a car with an automatic.

> A friend lost his Tahoe's automatic at around 50k miles.

4L60E. Same basic design GM's used for 2 decades now. The bugs were
worked out long ago. GM has 4 RWD automatics, 1 of which isn't used in
the US (unless you count Isuzu, i think they're still around). The 4L60
is a 20 year old design, the 4L80 is a TH400 with an overdrive, the 5L40
is some thing BMW and Caddy use (Easy way to **** off BMW snobs is to
point out that the automatic tranny is probbably made by GM...)

GM doesn't design a tranny per platform, they have a few designs which
go into EVERYTHING. If the 4L60 was a bad design*, 1/2 of GM's SUV line
would be dropping dead right now. The only real weaknesses of it are
it's not happy at high RPMs, and older non electronic (TH 700) variety
is known to blow up governors. If you've got a TH 700 that won't come
out of first, 99% of the time, it's a stripped gov gear.

> THe dealer said - get in line!

Beats Honda's amazing 5 speeds, they're having a HUGE recall action on
just about all of them, due to it being a ****ed design. We had the one
in our minivan 'inspected' (i.e., they look at it, yup, it's a
transmission). We're keeping our fingers crossed. The dealer STILL
can't come up with an answer as to WHY the thing can't pick a gear,
period. Honda also did a major action with their Acura line, too.

Chryslers suck too. The recent (i.e. last 25 years) 3, 4, and 5 speeds
are junk.

*it's a weird one, but not a bad one. Also AFAIK the ONLY 4 speed that
has 2 planataries, every other one has 3 or more, save for Ford's AOD
and derrived designs, which have a single planatary in them.