A540E and A541E Q's

[328FTW]

Have a A541E that has kicked the bucket. Now I thought the rebuilt A540E I had on the floor would fit, wrong The valve body and electrics are different, an almost but not quite thing which is infuriating.

Anyway seems like a slipping clutch from the horrid horrid burnt smell and the way feathering it was making it bite back in. Are the guts of the A540E the same as the A541E? Like the clutch packs and sun gear etc as well as how they fit in the housing. So far looks identical and I can mix and match the parts to get it all the fit I think, part numbers for the clutch packs and stuff look the same so can I make this work?


Also if you can't answer that what about finding burnt clutch disks? I dunno what a burnt out one looks like. Transmission was run low on oil and I can assume overheated a set cause first was fine but upper gears were gone but will the burnt out ones have obvious tell tale signs?

[328FTW]

Let me put to bed a few things about these for those searching for info for how easy it is to use one or the other on their car. The A540E is not the same are the A541E. The valve bodies are different and where they bolt to is oh so slightly different so you can't just bolt the later body and electrics onto the older box or vice versa.

Now as for swapping the guts out they are different, revised sun gear and larger centre clutch packs. The rear set just before the differential are the same however and this is what burnt out on mine. In fact that whole assembly was the same and the older box had that rebuilt so I used the whole assembly which fit perfect. Some of the clutch packs in the sun gear are the same so I used the new ones from the rebuilt box. The front piece where the torque converter fits into is also different. The whole internals looked to be revised apart from that bit that failed which I replaced.



All and all it would of been easier to buy a full rebuild kit or a new gearbox. I still dunno if mine works yet, guess I will find out today but I aligned all the parts the right way so fingers crossed.