48 RE Transmission Overview
2003.5-2007 Dodge Ram
We’re not simply rebuilding your transmission. We’re looking at what fails, how it fails, and what we can do to eliminate that failure. Our trademark is attention to detail and quality upgrades.
“That's why we spend the extra time and put the extra parts in it that make us less money. Because the reality is that you compare my build to somebody else's, mine's going to be higher quality, but his profit margin is going to be higher than mine.”
- Cody Gilbert, Owner/Founder
The Common Issues We See
Valve Body
Much like its younger sibling, the 48RE transmission is prone to valve body issues. While these are well known issues with established procedures and upgrades to mitigate and/or eliminate them, we do not actually manufacture the valve bodies ourselves. This is due to long term back orders for the tooling. However, we do have a couple trusted suppliers for the valve bodies who build them the way we would and the way we do with the 68RFE. These valve bodies are built according to the load they will be under. A 500hp and 1000hp truck will not receive the same valve body or components within the valve body. We will make sure each gets the one that will last.
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Clutch
A common pain point that requires upgrading, but not excessively. People tend to use a factory setup (not good enough for us) or they go crazy on the clutch stack up (unnecessarily expensive.) We have a proven method of adding a clutch to the direct drum, and adding a clutch to the OD brake. Cost effective and a true reliability upgrade. (We’ve put this setup in our 1000 hp truck. It works.)
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Upgraded Components
The servo, strut, anchor, and accumulator piston come from the factory in a variety of materials ranging from stamp steel to cast aluminum to polyplastic. We replace all of these with a billet version of the component. An easy upgrade that offers a lot of peace of mind.
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Input Shaft
Like the components above, this upgrade is simply replacing the factory input shaft with a billet example. If the factory input shaft were to fail, it could cause a considerable amount of damage to the pump, the shaft, the converter and more. It sounds like a simple upgrade, but it saves a lot of pain in the future.
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Factory Pan
If it comes into our shop with a factory pan, it won’t leave with a factory pan if left for us to decide. Every 48RE that comes in gets a deep pan. Not only is this because of the benefits of increased fluid capacity, but also because the factory pan is prone to leaking and inconvenient to service leading to a lack of service and reduced transmission life.
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Input Shaft
If it’s not maintained, it won’t last. Sure it sounds obvious, but this tends to be one of the more common reasons we’re rebuilding 48REs. Service it and it will last.
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