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spidergwenstefani · 7 years ago

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Holy Dimensional Gateway, Batman! | 1/?

oh fuck look out cause I’m about to attempt a multichapter fic and my track record with finishing those has been um. not great.

but here’s to new beginnings! I couldn’t justify cutting my idea of a plot for this down enough to be a oneshot so we’ll see how this goes.

In which Clint gets dragged through a hole in space and lands in a universe that’s dark, violent, and… not entirely unfamiliar. It’s populated with a whole kooky cast of masked vigilantes, which sucks because Clint just wants to get home. Bucky just wants to stop making dumbass decisions, like diving into a wormhole to save his crush.

TW: guns, the writer’s own open hostilities towards the DC universe

Rated: T?

The future has a way of surprising you, Bucky thinks as he stares out into the blackness of space. He allows himself a small smile that it’s Steve’s voice saying the words in his head, because Bucky was doing a little more than sleeping during the seventy year gap. It took Steve a while to realize that Bucky wouldn’t be bamboozled by the fucking coffee machine, that the years in between are just blood-splattered snapshots in his mind, but yeah, Steve, he noticed cassette tapes.

Still, his memories from HYDRA are patchy at best, and Bucky doubts that watching the moon landing on TV would have come anywhere close to preparing him for actually being up among the stars, drifting through the void in an impossibly thin Stark-branded prototype space suit. It’s awesome, in the oldest sense of the word. It’s terrifying, only a few layers of metal between him and imminent death, but it’s a kind of terrifying that envelops you like a soft blanket and almost starts to feel safe.

“I hate space,” Clint grunts out next to him through gritted teeth. Bucky turns enough in his harness to watch Clint, eyes shut tight and knuckles white against the edge of his seat, and maybe the siren song of the cold expanse has made him a little poetic, but he thinks there’s some kind of a simile there. Clint’s like space a little bit. Ever-present, easy to get lost in. Terrifying, but only because he makes Bucky feel so safe. Beautiful.

“God, can you get space-sick? I don’t want to know what happens if I puke in zero-g.”

Alright, so it’s not a perfect metaphor.

“Robin Hood, if you puke in my ship I’m chucking you out the airlock,” Tony calls from the pilot’s seat. Clint clenches his jaw and groans.

“Why am I here? Nobody even knows how arrows work in space. I’m not enhanced. I’m soft. One wrong hit and I get vacuumed out of this thing and liquified into meat jelly.”

“Obviously we brought you for morale,” Steve answers from his seat next to Tony.

“And the scientific inaccuracies. It adds charm. Like we’re in a movie,” Tony contributes. “By the way, I’m not even going to touch all the problems with what you’ve just said, but I am absolutely having JARVIS replay them for Bruce when we get back.”

“Also, the SHIELD station has artificial gravity, so arrows will work just fine,” Steve says, pointing through the disturbingly large windows to the giant donut they’re steadily approaching. The station is big and white, glowing bright against the pitch black.

“Putting me in a giant spinning loop is not gonna solve the problem, Cap. I do my best work where the air isn’t canned.”

Bucky wishes the harnesses weren’t so restrictive. He’d give Clint a reassuring shoulder bump, maybe nudge him with an elbow like he does when their eyes catch before a big mission. But the way Stark has them strapped in means it’s mostly just forearms that are free, and even if Clint has been returning his flirting a little more lately, he doubts a pat on the inner thigh is particularly welcome right now.

“Why isn’t Thor on this mission? Dimensional portals are totally his thing, right?” Clint lets his head thump back against the seat, eyes still tightly shut. Bucky finds his gaze drawn to the lines of his neck.

“Thor’s fighting style isn’t very… containable,” Steve says. “We don’t want to cause too much damage.”

“You mean we don’t want to punch a death-hole in the tissue paper hell-donut,” Clint whines. “Only SHIELD would build a research station around a newly discovered dimensional portal without checking to see if anything could come out of it. This is my last mission. I’m going to fucking retire. Go live on a farm or something. Somewhere with a lot of ground.”

“You say that every other mission,” Bucky says, not bothering to hide the smile in his voice. Clint actually cracks his eyes open at that, giving Bucky a half-hearted glare.

“The portal was stable when they built the station,” Tony says, maneuvering them around to the docking bay and flipping a dizzying amount of switches as the ship glides into place. “It’s only recently that things have started coming out. My theory is that the connection to the other side has frayed. It’s not a door that only opens to one room anymore.”

“Awesome,” Clint says weakly, and the ship settles into the port with a mechanical thunk.

>>==========>

The space station isn’t nearly as cool as the space ship, Bucky decides. There’s no windows, and Clint’s kind of right about the artificial gravity being disconcerting. He’s not even upset when an alarm goes off, painting the cold plastic walls a startling red and making them skip the grand tour. The SHIELD astronaut that helped them out of the docking bay seems a little concerned, however. She jogs ahead of them, unholstering some kind of stun baton, which must be the only SHIELD weapon trusted in a place like this. Bucky would be concerned too, having to face the possible horrors of the universe with something that’s barely a step up from a taser. It had been a hell of a time for him to convince Steve and Tony to allow him a sniper rifle, conceding that he wouldn’t use it unless he ended up on the wrong side of the gateway.

“We’ve had things coming through more and more often,” she says as they near a sealed door, warnings plastered across it in glossy red. “There was almost four months between the first visitors and the second. Now it’s every few weeks. Our last batch was only six days ago.”

“Are there any similarities between the creatures? Patterns, maybe?” Tony asks, with what Bucky thinks is too much excitement. At least he closes the helmet on his suit, not too starry-eyed with the prospect of alien lifeforms to remember the situation at hand.

“Not exactly, although the ones that breathe oxygen best seem to come through in groups. Most of them end up asphyxiating before they can do too much damage. That’s what the last ones did.”

“So they come in clusters that breathe similar atmospheres?” Tony hasn’t reduced himself to scientific babble yet, although Bucky can sense he’s close. “It might be opening up to a few gateways on each planet. Maybe the link up is affected by gravitational pull, or solar radiation.” Yep, there it is.

The astronaut keys in a code, stun baton held at the ready as the doors slide open.

“What the hell?” Bucky says, ducking as a thick vine immediately whips toward them. He blocks it with his left arm on autopilot, and Clint pins the thickest part of it to the doorway with a quick shot. Their eyes meet and Bucky manages a nod of thanks before another one of the freaky vine tendrils slithering out of the dimensional gateway tries to sweep his feet out from under him.

The gateway itself is kind of hard to look at, like it doesn’t interact with light the way a solid object should. There’s definitely edges, although Bucky doubts he could point them out if asked, and it only seems to open on one side, letting the vine monster tentacles straight out into the center of the room.

Tony keeps his repulsor blasts to a minimum, waiting until he’s got a vine closed in his hand to let one loose, and Steve does more hacking with his shield than throwing. They make short work of the thing, considering none of them know what the hell it is. The floor is littered with gently smoking, slightly wriggling vine chunks by the time the thing gives up, if it’s sentient enough to understand surrender. The rest of the vines slither back into the void, and as Bucky watches, the not-quite-edges seem to fold in on themselves, shrinking down to a pinprick of black before shooting back out into the giant circular portal it was moments ago, this time sans plant-tentacles.

“Cool. We’re done with space. Let’s go home,” Clint says, rubbing his wrist where the woody bark of a vine seems to have scraped it. Tony ignores him, circling the gateway like a cat presented with a new toy.

“That’s fascinating. This side of the gateway isn’t static. It’s like a whole new portal that’s just opened up in the same spot.”

“Yeah, fascinating. Let’s go back to Earth and tell some scientists all about it,” Clint says, the hope dying from his voice as Tony reaches cautiously for the edges of the gateway.

“Not so fast, Legolas. We don’t leave until the portal is closed for good, and we’ve still got about a million tests to run on this thing before I’ll even begin to know how to do that.”

“I hate space,” Clint says petulantly, kicking at a particularly large coil of slightly spasming vine.

Bucky barely has time to blink before the vine grabs a hold of Clint’s leg, the severed end shooting straight for the gateway and pulling Clint along with it.

“Fuck,” Clint manages, and Bucky lunges for him, almost getting a grip on Clint’s forearm before he slips away, him and the vine sucked into the giant gap in space without so much as a ripple.

“Clint,” Bucky shouts, the sound of it not reaching his ears. He moves automatically, barely registering Steve’s warnings, every noise suddenly far away, like he’s under water. He’s jumped feet-first into the gateway before he even has time to think.

>>==========>

Clint hates space.

It comes with an unease that settles into the very bones of him, makes him feel like he’s off balance at his innermost core, farther out than he was ever meant to go. Artificial gravity doesn’t do much to help. He still feels the wrongness with senses he never knew he had.

So when he comes out the other side of the doorway, the fact that he’s no longer in space registers before anything else. The tug of real, Earth-strength gravity settles his nerves before he’s even noticed that he’s too high up in the atmosphere to see anything but stormy grey clouds, and falling like a stone.

Clint’s never been inside a cloud before, but the charm wears off quick as the puffs of foggy grey drench him to his core on his way down. At least he’s still got his bow in his hand, and his quiver on his back. He gives the alien vine around his ankle an angry kick, but the thing already relaxed its hold the moment they came out the other side, and it slithers off more than willingly, plummeting out of sight.

Then suddenly the clouds are gone, and a rickety roof is rushing up to meet Clint, looking like some kind of dilapidated train that got it’s directions all turned around. Clint has time to turn shoulder-first against the oncoming building, and almost enough time to wonder what it says about his life that falling through a roof is a welcome experience after the violent emptiness of space.

The rooftop splinters immediately on impact, as does the attic floor, and the next floor, too. He plummets into some kind of dusty couch with enough impact to snap the thing, but the floorboards beneath hold fast. Some part of Clint’s brain manages to register that the building looks decrepit and abandoned, enough that he’s surprised to see about six guns pointed at his face when the dust clears.

“Who the fuck are you?” A voice spits out, and Clint follows the barrel of the gun directly in front of his nose to find the speaker. The guy is human, at least by every way Clint knows to check, and his friends are too. He’s not dressed exactly like a 1930’s gangster, but he’s sure dressed like he grew up admiring them. He’s got a nasty sneer and an accent that’s so deep New York, Clint might laugh if he hadn’t just had all the wind knocked out of him. He wraps his fingers tighter around his bow, which, through a combination of being cradled protectively during the fall and being made out of a fucking adamantium alloy, seems to have survived unscathed.

“Woah,” he manages to cough out through the dust. “You look like an asshole.”

The guy shifts his weight, finger tightening on the trigger, but Clint’s already rolled off the former couch and pinned one of the other goon’s wrists to the wall by the time Asshole manages to get a round off into the couch cushions. The goose feathers that erupt from the pillows do add a nice ambiance to the fight, though, and Clint takes down two more guys while Asshole chokes on one of them. One of the gangsters gets a shot out, putting a few holes in the drywall before Clint gets him through the shoulder. He knocks the fifth guy out with a blow to the head, just in time to shoot the gun out of Asshole’s hand and pin it to the far wall. Asshole lunges for him, but ends up tripping over a floorboard Clint must have brought with him. He goes down hard, and Clint plants his boot on Asshole’s chest, drawing an arrow and letting the tip hover directly over his forehead. Asshole almost goes cross-eyed trying to look at it.

“Are you Green fucking Arrow?”

“Do I look like Green Fucking Arrow?” Clint spits out, going out on a limb and guessing Green Fucking Arrow’s signature color isn’t purple.

“Who do you work for? Penguin? Scarecrow? Bats?”

Clint weighs his options, because he’s getting the impending sense that he’s not in Kansas anymore, and this guy might have some information on what kind of gritty noir universe he’s crashed into. On the other hand, he can’t even begin to parse through the words that just came out of Asshole’s mouth, and he’s starting to feel a post-space-travel headache coming on. Maybe he can look for answers later. After a nap.

He only manages to to lower his bow by a fraction of an inch before someone else makes the call for him. Something heavy hits Clint in the back of the head, hard, and the whole world crumbles into darkness.

>>==========>

Clint wakes up to a blinding spotlight shining directly into his eyes. His arms are strapped down to something that feels like a chair, and the way his aids are picking up on sounds tells him that the background noises are off here. Too echoey, maybe.

His eyes adjust slowly, and he can’t see far past the column of light trained on him, but wherever he is seems cavernous. The air is damp and cold, and Clint swears the shadows up above look like stalactites. Or stalagmites. He’s never figured out which is which. His mouth feels like sandpaper, and he’s got a headache that feels more like it’s brought on by a concussion than space travel. A true connoisseur like him can tell the difference.

There’s movement on the edge of his vision, and Clint manages to follow the shape of a shadow, lurking just on the edges of the darkness. His aids don’t do so great with low noises, but Clint’s pretty sure the thing isn’t making any sound as it glides across the cave floor.

“Who are you?” a voice echoes out, low and fucking chilling. It makes Clint’s throat hurt just to listen to it. It sounds demonic, like the shadow’s been gargling glass shards instead of listerine. Fuck, it sounds like Thor with the flu.

“Nobody important,” Clint says, and his own voice doesn’t sound too great either. He’d kill for a glass of water right now. It might come to that. The shadow doesn’t seem like it’d be easily swayed by asking nicely. “Who are you?”

“You don’t know who I am?” the shadow growls.

“I don’t know if you were there, but I fell from the sky a little bit,” Clint says. “I’m not from around here.”

“I am darkness,” the shadow says, voice rumbling through the cave in a way that Clint thinks might be ominous if it weren’t filtered into static by his hearing aids. “I am the night.”

“Yeah, and I’m clearly from another fucking universe, so if you’re trying to intimidate me you’re going to have to add more context.”

He feels the shadow approach more than sees, and Clint thanks whatever gods rule over this grimdark universe that Natasha isn’t here to see the shiver that runs down his spine as a figure materializes out of the blackness.

“I’m Batman,” it says, and even with the gravelly voice fuzzed to shit through his hearing aids, Clint gets the sense that this should be all the context he needs. Batman is- well Batman’s kind of a nightmare. His costume is all shadows and odd edges and he seems to shift between phantom and solid even as Clint watches him step further into the light, although that might just be his concussion settling in. The whole outfit sparks a memory through his haze of disorientation. It looks like the joke costume Bucky talked Steve into submitting when the Avengers PR team was pushing for a Winter Soldier rebranding. One look at the nightmare grimace mask and tattered cape and the costume department had clammed right up, although Steve wasn’t too happy about the extra therapy hours they had enforced after seeing such a dark glimpse into the psyche of Captain America.

“You don’t seem impressed,” Batman rumbles, looming in closer. Clint realizes he’s grinning like some kind of psycho, and shoves the memory back down. Probably better not to piss off some kind of demonic creature within a day of entering it’s universe.

“No, sorry, you’re very impressive. I was just thinking of something else. You remind me of someone.”

That… actually seems to throw Batman off. He looms backwards, and Clint’s mind clears enough to realize that he’s less demon-cloaked-in-shadow and more human-cloaked-in-cape.

“What are you doing in Gotham?” Batman rumbles, and that’s somewhat of a relief. Clint had been hoping the glimpse of crumbling skyline he got wasn’t some horrific version of New York in shambles.

“That’s a really long story. And I’ll pass out before I finish it, so you should probably untie me.” Clint coughs for effect. Batman seems unphased.

“What were you doing in one of the Falcone hideouts?” Anger seems to rush back into his voice with the question, and Clint shrinks back against the chair a little.

“Woah, woah. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, alright? Your friends greeted me with some guns to the face so I reacted in self defense. I didn’t have any sort of agenda, I swear.” Except he sort of did. Alternate universe or not, Clint knows bad when he sees it, and Asshole and his friends reeked of malintent. Batman definitely registers on the scale as well.

Batman falls silent at that, although Clint can practically see the rage curling off him like smoke. He gets a sudden pang of loneliness in his chest. He wishes Bucky was here. He makes the anger look a lot sexier.

“So you don’t know the Falcones?”

“I don’t know you, you think I know them? I told you, I’m not from this hell of a universe. I fell through a fucking gateway in space and landed here. All I want to do is get home.”

Batman looms contemplatively.

“It would be very, very stupid to try anything,” he rumbles carefully. Clint holds back an eye roll.

“Yeah, I’m picking up on that.”

Batman reaches out a clawed, no, gloved hand, pushing down a button. The restraints keeping Clint to the chair fall open with a mechanical hiss, and he gingerly rubs at his wrists.

“So, when you kidnapped me out of an abandoned building, you didn’t happen to pick up my bow, did you?” He looks up hopefully, sighing as he’s met with an unrelenting scowl. “Yeah, alright. Just thought I’d ask.” Clint slides off the chair, keeping his movements open and cautious. Once he’s out of the interrogation spotlight, his eyes adjust to the cave much quicker. Clint’s mouth falls open as he stares into the depths of the cavern.

“Fucking christ, what are you, Victor Von Doom? How many gadgets can a supervillain possibly need?”

“I’m not a supervillain,” Batman growls, sounding almost offended. Clint blinks, and his eyes fall on something behind his darkly shrouded shoulders. There’s a display case. Well, a row of display cases. Most of them are full of haunting iterations of Batman’s current costume, but Clint’s eyes catch on the brighter ones. Red, green, yelllow, and purple spandex glint back at him through the gloom.

“Well, fuck me. Are you a good guy?”

>>==========>

The blackness of the portal gives way to bright blue skies and a sparkling metropolis. The first thing Bucky notices is that Clint isn’t below him. There’s no flailing dumbass hurtling towards the ground, and no black and purple smear on the pavement below, which is almost upsettingly spotless. The glimpse Bucky gets of his surroundings as he hurdles downwards feels like a creepy utopian image of New York, all the litter and grime and graffiti and heart scrubbed spotless and gleaming. He allows himself a little smug satisfaction as he drops past a skyscraper and punches his hand into the brick to slow his descent.

There’s an explosion from above, and Bucky looks up to see the other side of the gateway still gaping out against the clear blue sky, two figures racing up toward it.

One of the flying figures looks like some hideous green version of the hulkbuster suit, but with a crackling cannon-like device strapped to its’ back. The second figure is a blue and red streak against the sky, its’ goal clearly being to impede the green monstrosity from reaching the gateway.

There’s a crowd gathering in the plaza below, and Bucky’s destructive descent doesn’t get half a glance from the people with their necks craned up to the sky. Another explosion sounds off, and a chunk of the green suit comes hurtling downward, heading toward a cluster of onlookers on the edge of the plaza. Bucky wonders if this twilight zone New York is some kind of haven for fucked up villains. It sure looks like it. He isn’t sure anyone who would willingly live in a place like this is worth saving. But his legs don’t seem to care, and his arm certainly doesn’t hesitate as he rips the front panel off of a mailbox and jumps in front of two kids that are too scared to move, using the metal sheet to deflect the smoking debris.

“Get back,” he growls, and the kids scream and stumble backwards, clearing the area in time as the green hulkbuster falls from the sky like a stone, the blue streak racing after it. Bucky retreats as well, although not as far as the rest of the crowd. The blue streak catches the hulkbuster about twenty feet off the ground. Bucky unstraps his machine gun from his back, because he’s just realized that the blue streak is shaped like a man, and he’s not about to let his guard down on any man that can lift a thing like that with one hand.

A guy tumbles out of the hulkbuster, dropping to the ground and scrambling away as Blue drops the empty shell with a pavement-cracking thump. The crowd behind him cheers, all eyes on Blue, and naturally misses the second guy pulling out some weird blaster that looks like something a Flash Gordon villain would use. He aims the sci-fi blaster at the crowd, and cheers turn to screams.

“Stay back, Superman,” the guy calls, the sun glinting off his bald head. “Or the whole crowd gets it.”

Bucky isn’t sure if this is some kind of elaborately immersive live theater, or if he’s just ended up in a universe modelled after saturday morning cartoons. Either way, baldy doesn’t seem to notice as Bucky puts him in his scopes.

“Not so fast, Luthor,” Blue, Superman, calls back. “Think about what you’re doing.”

“Oh, I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about it long and- AAGH” Bucky’s bullet goes clean through Luthor’s arm, sending the blaster spinning away and giving Superman the opening to scoop the guy up by the back of his shirt. Bucky can’t see any reason the guy can fly like that, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from hovering a triumphant ten feet above the crowd.

“Evil never prospers, Luthor. You’re headed straight for Stryker’s Island.”

The two of them disappear in a blur of blue.

Bucky needs a drink. He thinks about his odds of finding a satisfyingly seedy bar in a shiny place like this and decides he needs more than one. The approaching police sirens suggest he find himself a few bottles.

He ducks into an alley as the crowd disperses, cursing whatever absolute sociopath of a city planner made these alleys so wide open and well lit. He considers chucking the domino mask and weapon in a dumpster, but decides there’s not much point when he still has a metal arm and is clad head to toe in combat gear and leather. He doesn’t even make it out the other end of the alley before there’s a flash of blue and he finds himself staring into the very intense glare of Superman himself.

“You’re not a civilian,” Superman booms, apparently not caring if the police find them or not. His fights must end in a lot less paperwork than Bucky’s tend to.

“No,” he agrees.

“What are you doing in Metropolis?” Superman raises his chin challengingly, showing off a heroic jawline and a stubborn glare that’s uncomfortably familiar. Bucky bites back a laugh because of course this hell hole is called fucking Metropolis. Instead, he holds his hands up placatingly, although the effect might be ruined some by the gun still in his hands.

“I’m looking for a friend.”

“And you thought the best way to find him was to go jumping through portals and tearing up buildings?”

“There was only one portal, really, and it’s not like we went through on purpose.” That’s half a lie, but Superman doesn’t seem to notice. “He should’ve come through right before me. Or maybe a while before. I don’t pretend to know anything about travelling through universes. His name’s Clint Barton. Tall, blond. Wears purple, shoots arrows. I think you’d know him if you saw him.”

“That portal opened up only a second before you came through,” Superman says, and he actually seems apologetic about it. “The only reason Luthor was heading for it is because he’s been studying interdimensional rifts for months. If your friend had come through, I would’ve seen him.”

“Figures he’d fuck it up like this,” Bucky mutters to himself, holstering his weapon. “That’s the last time I let my guard down around a fucking sentient vine.”

“Sentient vine?” Superman actually perks up at that, and Bucky raises a brow.

“Yeah, it pulled him in. Sound familiar?”

Superman beamed at him, and Bucky resisted the urge to punch him right in the gleaming teeth.

“I don’t know where your friend is, but I know someone who might.”

#winterhawk #buckyclint #my fics #Rated: T #idk if you've caught on yet but i have absolutely no method for rating my fics #also i'd like to state for the record that i'm a big dc comics fan #i just also hate dc comics #also thats a stupid name #dc comics???#detective comics comics???

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itsworn · 8 years ago

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A Modern 4L60E Trans Backing a Vintage Ford FE Engine

Upgrading an FE engine to modern performance expectations is easy to do, as we’ve proven in the past couple issues with our Formidable FE build series. We managed to build a bulletproof engine that made respectable power, while providing all the modern necessities (power steering pump, A/C, and high-amp alternator). And while we went with a four-barrel carburetor for ease of installation, it would be pretty simple to update the induction to a modern EFI setup without touching the long block. But as we neared closer to dropping the new FE back in its home between the ’rails of our buddy Danny “Paloma” Valenzuela’s 1969 F-100, we realized that there was still one glaring omission when it came to our updated driveline: the original C6 transmission.

When we pulled the drivetrain out a few months back, the C6 was showing signs of a transmission that needed some attention. Talking with Danny revealed the fact that the trans had started to slip and one look at the dark, murky ATF once drained from the trans pan and there was no question that the old Ford automatic needed to be rebuilt. That said, we were in a position where it had to be decided whether we wanted to live with the old three-speed and cough up the cash to rebuild it or upgrade to a new, modern overdrive transmission. Naturally, the decision took a nanosecond and before long we were on the phone with TCI Automotive, getting the gist on what was available to mate to the FE engine.

The answer, as we found, was surprising. Since Ford discontinued the FE engine before introducing the AOD transmission, there was never a factory-installed automatic overdrive transmission option for the FE engine. Indeed, the only auto ever mated to the FE in standard form was the C6.

The solution? Mate a GM overdrive via a bellhousing adapter.

Obviously, our initial thought was, “Why not use an AOD and keep it all Ford?”

Ondra Terry of TCI Automotive tells us that the AOD’s roller clutch is a weak link, as is the pressure solenoid and pressure regulator spring, which can cause clutch pack failure. This requires additional clutches to the direct clutch drum to increase longevity. Add to this the AOD’s notoriously sloppy shift tendencies and having to deal with the finicky TV rod linkage and it became clear why we were being steered toward a GM trans. But, similarly to the AOD, GM’s commonly used overdrive, the 700-R4, suffers from many of the same undesirable traits as the AOD. So what’s the solution? The most modern transmission available today, upgraded to TCI Automotive’s standards, of course; the 4L60E.

TCI’s Street Fighter 4L60E (PN 371010) is a brand-new transmission that begins with a thoroughly inspected case and components. Stock parts are replaced with high-performance bands and components, such as billet pump rotors, which results in an improved lubrication system that increases the fluid sent to planetaries and internals. Higher line pressure for extra firm shifts and greater torque capacity with less slippage is also a standard feature. Problematic parts are replaced with stronger components, many of which are fabricated and machined in-house by TCI Automotive. The valvebodies are completely remanufactured and tested prior to installation, a static hydraulic test during final assembly is applied, as is a final dyno test prior to shipping. The result is a transmission that’s triple tested and arrives ready to rock.

What makes the 4L60E transmission so unique is the fact that it is fully electronically controlled and does not rely on vacuum or TV pressure in order to shift. Instead, the 4L60E relies on inputs programmed into the Transmission Control Unit (TCU) to control the shift points, shift firmness, and shift speed, making the transmission’s characteristics 100 percent configurable. No special software or laptop is needed as inputs and changes can be made via TCI Automotive’s handheld programming unit. Of course, if you’re like me and like to keep things simple, TCI Automotive ships their electronic transmissions ready to roll with no tuning necessary.

To mate the modern GM transmission to our vintage FE engine, enter Wilcap Company. Manufacturing adapters and speed equipment since 1946, Wilcap is the leader in mating vintage engines to a variety of transmission options. I’ve used Wilcap in the past to mate an early Hemi engine to a five-speed manual trans, so the FE project is not my first foray into the custom adapter market, which Wilcap is definitely the leader. To mate the FE engine to the 4L60E transmission, Wilcap offers a kit (PN 390-350 AT) that consists of a CNC machined, blanchard ground aluminum adapter plate, neutral balance steel flexplate, aluminum crankshaft spacer, dowel pins, and grade 8 fasteners. A modified small-block Mopar two-bolt mini starter is also required, which Wilcap provided.

Following a simple modification to the transmission bellhousing, the Wilcap components allow the 4L60E trans to mate to the FE engine just as easily as a standard automatic transmission installation, resulting in what we think is a perfect pairing: a vintage engine backed by a modern transmission.

The Street Fighter 4L60E (PN 371010) as shipped from TCI Automotive comes complete with the triple-tested transmission, TCU, handheld controller, and wiring harness. Note the billet aluminum servo kit (red anodized cover), one of many upgrades TCI performs on the 4L60E Street Fighter transmissions. The billet cover eliminates fluid loss under harsh driving conditions while the high-performance servo kit delivers more band force for longer life and better operation.

The Wilcap adapter kit (PN 390-350 AT) to mate a 4L60E to a vintage FE engine consists of a CNC machined and Blanchard ground aluminum adapter plate, aluminum crankshaft spacer, neutral-balance flexplate, dowel pins, and hardware.

Wilcap’s adapter kit requires the use of a modified small-block Mopar starter. Here, Wilcap’s modified starter is on the right while an unmodified PerTronix starter is on the left for comparison. Notice that the nose of the starter has been removed.

To accommodate the Mopar starter, the transmission bellhousing needs to be modified to clear the starter’s pinion shaft and drive gear so that it can engage the flexplate without contacting the bellhousing. Dry-fitting the adapter plate to the transmission, the offending section of the bellhousing can be marked for removal.

Here’s the section of the bellhousing that has been removed for starter clearance.

With the adapter mated to the transmission, the starter is installed and the clearances double0checked. The starter gear is extended to its fullest to ensure that it doesn’t contact the bellhousing.

There are two special offset fasteners that need to be installed on the engine block next. They are marked for proper location and orientation with the adapter and are installed using a 1/4-inch Allen wrench.

Note the relationship between the offset fastener and the adapter, aligned perfectly thanks to the markings provided by Wilcap.

With the offset fasteners installed, the provided socket head cap screws can be installed, fastening the adapter to the block.

Next, the crankshaft spacer is slid in place …

… followed by the provided neutral balance flexplate. Note the ring gear’s relationship to the flexplate surface (it’s offset to the engine side).

The flexplate is installed using the provided low-profile grade 8 fasteners from Wilcap and torqued to spec.

Spacing between the transmission side of the flexplate and the adapter should be between 0.750-0.875 inch. Damage to the transmission and/or starter could result if this tolerance is out of spec.

To ensure that the torque converter is fully installed in the transmission, the distance between the mounting boss on the converter and the transmission housing is measured. This measurement should be 1 inch. We’re using a 2,400-rpm stall TCI Automotive converter, PN 243107, which features woven carbon-fiber clutch lining, furnace brazed fins, a heat-treated steel pump hub, and needle bearings.

With everything checking out, it’s time to install the 4L60E trans to our FE engine.

Studs, fully inserted into the aluminum adapter, ensure that the transmission is fastened as securely as possible without the chance of stripped threads due to misaligned bellhousing bolts.

With the transmission in place, the torque converter “pullback” between the flexplate is checked before the two are fastened together. Standard pullback specs between 0.125 and 0.250 inches apply. Once the engine is in the truck, we’ll hook up our trans cooler and lines, speedo sender, and wiring harness, and mount the TCU in the cab.

The post A Modern 4L60E Trans Backing a Vintage Ford FE Engine appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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