If the shop had built it well to begin with, it might have stayed out and the warranty company might have stayed in business. It’s kind of a cruel joke, when you think about it, that a shop might build a less-than-adequate transmission, figuring that the insurance company will have to pay if it fails, and when the company goes out of business the shop has to put a lot of money into fixing it because it will now have to go out and last ’til the warranty ends, which could be a long time. From the feedback I have been receiving lately, I thought the topic needed to be revisited. I have long advocated the second method, and this isn’t the first time I’ve spoken of it. They could do additional work to the transmission by adding upgrades and updates to provide a better class of service, which in essence changes the basic product to one that now has a value that would support a longer warranty. Even if they weren’t issued that way, the shop no doubt would try to satisfy the customer just to save its reputation in the community. Since these warranties are issued to the shop and not the end-user customer, the shop is on the hook. When too many of them fail early, it depletes the company’s cash reserves so that eventually it no longer can cover the warranties and it goes out of business. They think it was built to perform a normal life. You see, when the warranty companies run their actuarial studies on how long rebuilt transmissions should last, they don’t take into account that a transmission might have been built to only a minimal standard. This is why so many extended-warranty companies have gone under, leaving shop owners to cover the remainder of these warranty periods. One of the problems with selling warranties that way is that if the transmission were built to only a minimum standard, there is a fair chance that it wouldn’t live through a longer warranty period. Then they would have to resell the warranties to their customers, one hopes at a profit. The shops would have to buy extended warranties from a company approved and licensed to sell them in that state.Since transmission shops are not licensed to sell insurance, they would be in violation of that state’s insurance regulations.įor shops to comply, one of two things must happen: That would be, in effect, selling insurance. Many states now have insurance commissions that say you can’t sell the same product and offer different-length warranties on it. OK, so we have a set of minimum standards that might be mandated by some state agency, but then what? What if we want to sell a transmission of a higher standard? Can we build more goodies into it to make it work better and last longer? Can we get more money for doing a better-than-minimal job. But like any law or regulation it had to be written for the majority of people who would use it as a guideline for their actions. That can be done if there is no regulation of any kind, and I’m sure there are a few less-than-reputable shops that would do it despite regulations or anything else. The purpose was to not have unscrupulous shops taking out transmissions, making minor repairs, giving them a coat of silver paint and calling them rebuilts. Of course, those were very minimal requirements. A torque converter had to be changed to meet this minimum standard only if it showed signs of failure or malfunction during the vehicle’s initial road test, if there were unaccountable metal filings in the pan, or if visual inspection and end-play checks deemed it out of specification. Then all gaskets seals, either rubber or metal clad sealing rings, either metal or Teflon friction clutches or bands of the paper-type-media style filter vacuum modulator (if so equipped) any sensors or solenoids that failed to pass a functional test any worn bushings, thrust washers or bearings and any hard parts deemed unfit for the minimum-length warranty placed on the transmission had to be replaced. First the transmission had to be completely disassembled and cleaned. Having been a rebuilder in my own top-quality, top-dollar shop for so many years, I believed that I knew what had to go into the basic overhauling of an automatic transmission to meet the minimum standard. Of course, I entered my sense of values into the equation. I helped write the regulation in my home state of New York because I didn’t want a bunch of bureaucrats writing anything the shops couldn’t live with.
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