electrical connectors Archives - Transmission Digest
Getting (and Staying) Connected

Being the technical director for the valve-body and solenoid department, I’ve seen more than my share of errors and mistakes that people have made while working with automatic transmissions. The majority involve electrical components, most of them involving the connectors in some way. Often damage to a connector is done during the disconnection process. We’ve all been told not to wiggle a connector to get it off because it can expand the pin cavities in the connector and cause the pins to have poor or no connection when the connector is plugged back in; for example, in Chrysler 604s.

What is ‘Fretting Corrosion’?

You may have heard the term fretting corrosion recently and wondered what is going on with this odd-sounding phrase. Fretting is defined by Merriam-Webster as “to pass away the time,” but it also means “to gnaw, chew or corrode,” and it is the second definition that can cause technicians to spend too much time experiencing the first. Fretting corrosion can cause time-consuming intermittent failures in a myriad of vehicle systems, and it can be difficult to find.

Hindsight Is 20/20

When we installed the new battery we checked the charging system again (the lazy way mentioned previously), and since we saw 13.8 volts we released the vehicle. A few days later she came back complaining of the same problem. This time when we checked the charging system (same old lazy way) we noticed that the generator was not charging, so we recommended replacing the generator, because this type of generator uses a one-way clutch on the pulley and is known to go bad, so we figured (assumed) that that was why we had seen the system charge at some times and not others.

Circuit Interruptus

I recently had a vehicle in with a symptom that I thought would be an easy fix, only to have it take up several hours that I had not anticipated losing. Does this sound familiar?
The 1996 Chevy Tahoe had a customer concern of “No low-beam headlamps.”

The 4L30-E Connector Connection

Because of the 4L30-E’s longevity (16 years now) and its use by a variety of vehicle manufacturers such as Isuzu, Honda, BMW and Cadillac, numerous changes have taken place in this transmission throughout those years.

One for the ‘Arc-ives’

Finding the cause of an electrical problem on a Ford Expedition requires some detective work

A 2002 Ford Expedition equipped with a 4.6-liter V-8 and 4R70W transmission came into the shop with a host of solenoid electrical codes.

EEC-IV and EEC-V Systems – Odd Behavior

EEC-IV and EEC-V systems sometimes may exhibit odd behavior such as erratic shifting, OD or engine light blinking, nonsense or unrelated codes, with no apparent cause.