I could really use some advice and/or some help with resolving the issues I am having with my truck. I own a 1998 Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab 4x4 with the 5.9 liter V-8. I bought this truck used with 59,000 miles on it and the previous owner had used it to haul his horse trailer. At about 92,000 miles the transmission went out and was replaced with a brand new unit. This second transmission is already having some problems. The current issues I am having are when it is extremely cold out the transmission refuses to shift into overdrive no matter how long the truck has been running. When it doesn't shift into overdrive I have heat in the inside of the cab, very little heat but there is some there. When it does manage to shift into overdrive, I loose all heat in the inside of the cab completely. I have replaced the thermostat and the radiator cap thinking it was some kind of radiator/coolant issue but I am starting to think it's somthing with the transmission cooler. This transmission has roughly 60,000 miles on it and the warranty expired a long time ago on it. I use my truck to tow snowmobiles, haul dirt bikes, and use it for hauling loads of building materials. I don't beat or abuse my truck so I can't understand why I am having transmission problems again. I have several questions......Is there a company out there that builds high performance transmissions for my truck? If I have to replace the transmission again I would like to have someting that won't go out on me again....If no one builds a transmission for my truck is there a better transmission that I can swap into my truck with little to no major modifications? I plan on keeping this truck for as long as I can and eventually I would like to modify it slightly, ie. suspension lift, larger tires so I would like a stout reliable transmission that's going to hold up. Thank you for any and all help you can offer me in this situation.

Joshua Kressmer  

Do you have a aux tranny cooler and how is it plumbed in??? It sounds like tranny is been over cooled and until it warms up enough OD is locked out. You are supposed to have a moderated sized cooler and you run fluid through tank cooler first the aux cooler as this help warm and stabilize tranny temps. Do not get carried away with trany cooler size as many do nor bypass radiator. (proper size would be about 6 x 12 or so) I would guess heater issue are because of way aux cooler is sized and configured.  As far as getting a high performance tranny, overall effective gear ratio for tire size and load has a big effect on tranny life. Most Dodge of that type and era had 3.21 or 3.55 axle ratios which are really too tall for a vehicle of that size and type and if you run bigger tires you are slowly frying tranny because it is riding converter stall a lot. A big cooler only prolongs the problem. If you have oversized tires and/or tall gears your money and efforts would be better spent on deeper axle gears than trying to beef tranny up more yet.  

From what I hear (I own a 97 I love the truck no matter what) but it's the clutches in the torque converter, they're junk and they wear FAST the debris run into the cooler and eventually clog the one way check valve running to the trans therefore starving the trans of fluid and causing it to overheat (the problem behind the unexplained dodge tranny overheat that everyone has.) I heard reccomendations to pull the check valve, bypass it and run a secondary cooler... I think you're better off with a new trans and torque converter... Pheonix Hard Parts has decent prices... anythings better than oem for the most part... Make sure you replace the torque converter as well though...