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AW4 Transmission Torque Converter Lock Up Controller

Guest article by 'Yuri'

. Hosted by permission of the author.

NOTE: This article is intended to provide you with information only! If you have any doubtsabout what you are doing then STOP and get help from someone having experience doingthis type of modification. As with all modifications be aware you are undertaking this at your own risk! Neither the author or owner of this site will be held responsible if you screwthis up.

Article begins here:

Ever since my AW4 swap, I've wanted to take advantage of it being electrically shifted, and modify theway it functions to suit my needs. The two ideas I wanted were a manual-shift (paddle shift), with theability to hold it in any gear, and a (user-friendly) torque converter lock. I'm still working on a designfor the shifter. But the TC lock has been designed, installed, and tested to my liking. Follow along as Itry to explain.What is it? For those unfamiliar with auto transmissions, I'll try to explain as simple as i can how itworks and what it is I'm trying to do. First of all, a torque converter is the link between an automatictransmission and the engine. It uses hydraulic force created by a rotating impeller in order to applypressure to different clutch packs inside the transmission. Think of it like an airplanes propeller... it cansit there on the runway rotating without the plane moving forward. The pilot increases engine speed,which turns the prop faster, and air pulls the plane forward. The torque converter works the sameway, but this 'forward potential' is how it applys pressure to the clutch packs (just like your foot applyspressure to the brake pedal). When the engine speed gets high enough, the first set of clutchesengages and your Jeep starts to move forward in first gear. The engine RPM drops. When the enginespeed increases again, the next set of clutches engages, which shifts it into second, and so on.The problem with this design is that the engine always needs to be spinning faster than the input of the tranny, simply because the impeller (prop) needs to move the hydraulic fluid (air) to work. This'slip' causes excess heat to build-up. This is where the TC lock comes into play. Essentially, the TC lock does just as the name implys... It locks the engine to the tranny input, thus creating a 1-1 relationship.The engine and tranny can then turn at the same RPM, thus reducing heat. It also saves a little fuelmilage because the engine doesn't need to run as high RPMs to provide the same input speed to thetranny. Most trannies accomplish this automatically by using a combination of fluid passages and/orelectrically-driven solenoids (as is the case with the AW4). You can see this driving down the road.When you get going a good speed in your highest gear, the tranny will drop a couple hundred RPMs.This is the TC lock functioning. It's almost like gaining another gear.

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Four wheelers have figured out that when you add larger tires, the factory specs justdon't cut-it anymore. You can change axle gearing to compensate for it, but there are so many otherfactors effecting the way it drives, like wind resistance, etc. that the vehicle isn't going to drive like thefactory designed. But... that's why we modify things! To IMPROVE them! If we could lock this torque

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Page 1 of 4Jeep Cherokee Transmission - AW4 Torque Converter Lock Up Controller 3/31/2009http://www.lunghd.com/Tech_Articles/Transmission_and_Transfer_Case/TransmissionController.htm

converter manually, we could improve how OUR Jeep works to suit US. If we force-lock it a little earlieron the highway, it will stop searching for the right gear. If we force-lock it while we're going down-hill,we can use the engine to help regulate our speed.

My goals:

I could have just used a switch to turn on/off the TC lock, but what fun would that havebeen? Besides, that wouldn't have functioned like I wanted. My goals for the project were to keep theTC lock user-friendly, since the wife drives my Jeep quite often, and I've got two future drivers comingin a couple years. So I needed this to turn on/off without much effort, yet still be easy enough for meto use on the whim. I had many ideas on how to do this, but after much investigation, most haddrawbacks of one kind or another.I had two reasons why I wanted a TC lock. The first was to help out on the highway, possibly saving alittle gas, but mostly just to keep it from downshifting at the slightest incline/headwind. The 'overdrivegear-hunting' has been one of my pet peaves in the past, that I'd like to get rid of. The other reason isfor a psudo compression braking effect while out wheelin'. Brakes work very hard on an autotransmission in 4low. So any help I can give them will be extremely beneficial. Many people warn tonot use the TC lock for this purpose because it wasn't designed to handle such high force. Truthfully,I'm not planning to use this very often. But I still wanted this functionality built-in. And I figure, if thistransmission can stand-up behind Tundra V8's and high-horsepower supercharged Celica V6's, than itshould be able to handle some abuse.Here's how it looks on paper, and some explanation on what's going on:

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Page 2 of 4Jeep Cherokee Transmission - AW4 Torque Converter Lock Up Controller 3/31/2009http://www.lunghd.com/Tech_Articles/Transmission_and_Transfer_Case/TransmissionController.htm

Remember when I said "user-friendly"? Well that's where I had a hard time figuring things out. For theroad, I figured that a good way to operate the TC lock would be a push-button latching switch. Hit itonce, and it turns on, twice and it's off. This is done using a bank of relays and a momentary switch(R1 through R5). But what happens if I have to slow down quickly and forget to turn it off, or worseyet PANIC STOP? After a little thinking, I liked the way a cruise control system solves this problem... bydisabling it with the brakes. Brilliant! This is Relay # R6 in my diagram. This relay has a constantground on pin 86 until the brake pedal is pushed, which opens the circuit.But not quite yet... this would not suit it's compression braking aspect, as I would probably be on thebrakes if the hill was steep enough to warrent compression braking. And that's the part that stumpedme for quite some time. What to use as a trigger for when I DON'T want the brakes to shut the TClock off. This is when I figured that I'd only be using the compression braking while in 4wd. So I usedthe 4wd light as a trigger to disable the brake relay. This is R7 in my diagram. The instrument cluster4WD indicator (mine says part time) is illuminated using a ground. When this ground is on pin 86, therelay closes between pin 30 and 87. This closure takes R6 out of the circuit.Relay R8 is used a little differently than would normally be seen (it's kinda reverse, running either frompins 87 or 87a and out pin 30). This relay serves a pretty important purpose. It's job is to switchbetween using the factory TCM and My TC lock. Basically, in it's normally closed state the relay actslike a solid wire from the TCM to the TC lock solenoid, using pins 87a and 30. When the TC lock turnson, that connection opens up and closes pin 30 with 87. This supplys 12v to solenoid C in the

Page 3 of 4Jeep Cherokee Transmission - AW4 Torque Converter Lock Up Controller 3/31/2009http://www.lunghd.com/Tech_Articles/Transmission_and_Transfer_Case/TransmissionController.htm