I always love seeing Brandon Sloan’s TikToks, since he has a truly mesmerizing understanding of one of the most intimidating parts of a modern car, the automatic transmission. Through his content, I learned that the inside of an automatic transmission’s valve body looks more like a puzzle only Daedalus could love.
This particular video is a great example of his on-the-fly knowledge of GM’s 6L80 transmission. His wife’s Tahoe was experiencing some strange behaviors, and he simply dropped the transmission and disassembled it revealing its incredibly complex inner workings. The maze-like valve body is often referred to as the brain of the transmission, and it usually lives on the bottom of the transmission itself. The structure of the valve body is full of different paths and valves to properly direct hydraulic fluid to smoothly shift gears based on the driving situation. The design of the valve body controls shift firmness and shift timing, as well as gear selection.
Of course, that’s a gross oversimplification of the whole process, but it’s all that I am capable of right now without enrolling in a trade school. If you are at all interested in learning more about the obscenely complex inner workings of automatic transmissions, I implore you to check out Brandon Sloan’s content which is usually branded as Performance Transmissions on most social media platforms. You might be able to learn a thing or two that could impress even the most seasoned mechanics in your life, and there’s nothing I like more than knowing more than someone expects.