Well, I am going to try to keep this short as I can and not write much about my ordeal with Cope Racing Transmissions but, I had issues with both of my transmissions he did for my one car. I took the car to his shop in Lowell because I wanted to ensure everything was done right. The car was a driver and yeah it had some leaks because I was slowly fixing things to make a better driver. So, anyways long story short I get the car back with the 1st transmission having a stuck governor. As soon as I took the car off the trailer And basically what it would do is it would hang up in 3rd gear. To actually get it to go back down to 1st I had to manual shift every time I took off from a stop. I got in contact with John and he was stumped to why it was doing that. He admitted it was a governor problem but, didn't know why it was sticking. He told me to drive it more in which I did. Didn't resolve the issue. I called John and let him know about the transmission. He talked me into a second transmission because he kept having issues with the car in shop on this 1st transmission. I wasn't happy about loosing the original transmission but, fine I just want the issue resolved.
So, anyways John builds the 2nd transmission. That was a ordeal in itself. To keep the story short it was a mess and it took a while to get the transmission built. Well, weeks go by, months go by and it became a frustrating process. I dropped the car off originally in Dec of 2011 and here we are in July/Aug of 2012 and the car is still out of commission. Finally, I told John just come get the car or just refund me the money back because the car should have never left his shop with the stuck governor. John apologized for some stuff (like I said not mentioning) I accepted but, it made me weary of the situation.
So, it's now Sep 2012 he gets the car and has the car for a week. I get a call from him informing me that the car is good to go and there is no issues. I get the car back and he drops it off and has to leave to go back to Lowell. So, I take the car out and the first thing I noticed is that the 1st to 2nd shift point was extremely high even under light acceleration. That light acceleration shift point was occurring at 1st to 2nd at 20 mph and the 2nd to 3rd was 25-30 mph. The other problem was that the transmission when you went to try to pass or go WOT the car would hold 1st gear half the time until you let up on it. Now, I played around with the kickdown setup on it and that didn't do much of anything.
So, what I did do was I decided to see what it would do without the kickdown under normally driving. I only drove the car around the corner 1/2 mile and then hooked it back up. My logic behind this was too see if it would confirm an internal problem with the transmission. On this test the car was actually shifting at a higher mph without the kickdown then with it hooked up so that confirmed that. I pulled off in a parking lot. Hooked it back up and drove the car back to storage. Sure, I could have dropped the pan but, why should I have to drop the pan when I paid John to install the torque converter and the transmission in the 1st place? I called John and got his voicemail. I left him a voicemail at this point that I was having an issue with the 2nd transmission and that I just wanted my money back because like I said there was some other stuff that transpired on his end through this whole ordeal that left me unhappy. Additionally, he told me that if I was not happy that he would refund me my money the back in Dec 2011 when I dropped the car off at his shop at that point in time.
I told him if he wanted to talk about this matter I wanted to discuss this via email to have a record of it. Well, long story short I got a partial refund about two months later and so I took what I could and just went with it because sometimes that's all you can do but, the whole situation left a bad taste in my mouth and really it's a shame. So, I finally I decided to write a little about my dealings with CRT and to this day I can't figure out why things had to go the way they did especially for someone who is so highly recommend in this community but, for me it was a very bad experience and one I won't forget. And like I said I'm leaving some details out of this story but, I can assure I was patient as I could be with John and this ordeal. But, there is a point where I got frustrated and had to cut the ties so to speak.
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And just for the record my build was just a 904 with a TF2 shift kit and a I had John install the low gearset since the car had highways gears in it and it was behind a mild small block.
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Here is some video I took of the 1st transmission and it's issue I sent to CRT. Don't me mind talking as I am trying to explain what is going on and as for the comment about the speedometer, yes it was rebuilt by Redline Gauge Works in CA before I sent it to Cope's shop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pVH2PAfduA
