Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Lee
Dry weight 3-4000 lbs; touring weight 4500-5800 lbs.
A Buick Park Avenue's curb weight can be 3800 lbs. They have lock-up converters. Come to think of it, full-size pickups do too.
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Yup they sure do, but in those setups they are controlled by the car's ecu. As soon as the throttle gets pushed passed a certain point or the load increases etc the converter unlocks. But in this case it would be operated by a toggle switch, so like I said if it was only engaged on the flats at cruising speed it should be fine, but as soon as a situation arose when a factory equipped lockup would disengage, but this one was left on, it could do a lot of damage.
But none of this matters as apparently it isn't a lock up converter. I didn't know anyone made switch pitch converters anymore, so as far as OP getting his money back in fuel savings after installing one, I would think that the part time 200 RPM lowering of stall speed would not be the most helpful thing to spend that money on. Since this rig doesn't have an overdrive anyway, at highway speeds it is probably already turning at an RPM that is above the stall speed (assuming current stall speed is around 1500-1800 given the engine its attached to), so if cruising RPM is say 2200 RPM, this converter is already as "locked up" as it's going to get, so lowering the stall speed at this point won't do anything. I see the advantage of having a higher stall speed in town in order to get it moving, then switching to a lower one for the highway, but as far as it acting as a "half overdrive", it would totally depend on your usual cruising RPMs and where your current converter stalls at.