An introduction to Valve Bodies Australia

The Evolution

With automotive manufactures on a never-ending quest for fuel economy and emission reductions, we have seen a massive shift in the industry from conventional 4-5-6 speed transmissions to 8-9-10 speeds. Generally, not much has changed in the transmission itself, for the most part it has stayed mechanically the same with multiple bands, drums and clutches being engaged to get a desired gear ratio. But in the valve body, there has been an evolution. With this evolution the units themselves have gotten a lot more complicated and difficult to diagnose issues.

History and Overview

My name is Nathan McCarthy and for the last 15 years I have worked for a major supplier to the automatic transmission industry in 3 different states, in a number of roles and have been witness to this change. That is what led me to purchase Valve Bodies Australia (VBOZ).

VBOZ has been in operation for over 9 years and was the brainchild of Bob Saddleton. Bob owned two transmission specialist businesses in Coffs Harbour and Tamworth NSW when he started to notice the evolution in this space, where in the UK and US there were multiple shops specializing only in valve body reconditioning, in Australia there were none. He invested heavily in specialist equipment and spent many years doing research and development into bench testing valve bodies independently from the transmission. Valve Bodies Australia now has a customer base in every state and territory in Australia and exports to countries in the Asia Pacific region.

Advantages & Innovations

Being able to bench test these units and put them through specific and measurable stress tests (i.e. Heat cycling, variable input line pressure cycling) has enabled us to focus in on route cause issues and save costly labour for both the end customer and transmission specialists alike. What was formally an educated stab in the dark is now a sure thing fix for any valve body failure or malfunction. 

As mentioned earlier, we have seen a shift to higher gear ratio transmissions, but we have also seen the industry move to more non-conventional drivetrains like CVT (continuously variable transmissions) and DSG/DCT (Direct-shit gearbox/Dual clutch transmission). These units are still controlled by a valve body and are still subjected to the same wear and tear that a conventional transmissions are experiencing. In fact, at Vboz we are now servicing just as many CVT valve bodies for repair as conventional transmissions. This has led the push to invest more into DSG/DCT as we can see a massive amount of OE manufactures moving to this platform.

Our Process

We investigate all valve bodies with a similar 3 step process to eliminate any question of ongoing issue. The first step is a visual inspection of the entire valve body completely disassembled. This gives us our 1^st indication of any excessive wear on the valves or bores or if there is an issue with any jammed valves. The second step is to vacuum check all valves to ensure they can hold a nominal amount of vacuum and give us an indication of what needs to be modified or machined to receive oversize valves. To most rebuilders or transmission specialists this is the final step, you would reassemble the valve body to be fitted back into the transmission and then the vehicle to be test driven. The issue there is that you are assuming that everything has been reassembled correctly and that all valves are running true and free. But what if they are not? What if you have accidentally put a valve in around the wrong way? There are sometimes over 100+ moving parts in a valve body and to conceive that 1 of those individual items could have been installed incorrectly is not uncommon. If this has occurred or if any of the critical circuits or solenoids are not performing as they should, then you start the costly process of diagnosing the problem. “Is it a valve body issue or a mechanical problem within the transmission?” then removing and disassembling the unit again to figure out where you may have gone wrong...

This brings us to our third step. Reconditioning and the hydraulically testing the solenoids independently, then on the refurbished valve body itself ensuring that it passes a number of heat cycles and various pressure tests. Obviously, there are a lot of other processes carried out in these “steps” tricks of the trade if you will, but you are now starting to understand the benefit of our process and appreciate you could save thousands of dollars by eliminating guess work. Most of our customers now just treat the valve body as a part to be replaced in the transmission, like a torque converter or a friction plate and with the option of reconditioning sometimes a fraction of the price of new.

Summary

With transmissions getting more complex and the amount of expensive specialist tools necessary to carry out these jobs, Valve Bodies Australia is designed to take out the guess work and give you more confidence in product you are producing. With most of your common makes and models covered and heavy-duty options available.