I’m no expert but here’s what I’ve learned hanging out here, on another forum, and from personal experience. The 4l60E tranny that most of these rides have is prone to early failure. They adjust them for nice smooth soft shifts to please the soccer moms but that increases the wear on the transmission. Making the shifts a little faster and firmer will increase tranny life. An auxiliary cooler, or larger auxiliary cooler if it came with one, is also a good thing to have. I bought my 2000 ‘Ho in December of 2007 with mileage in the mid 90k’s. About four months later, the needle bearing in the sun gear went out and I had to have it rebuilt. The torque converter looked fine so my mechanic recommended not replacing it. He said if it did go out soon he’d make good on it since it was his recommendation to keep it. It’s still going strong, no problems and I’m over 100K miles. While he was rebuilding it I had a Superior shift kit installed. The shift kit makes the shifts firmer and quicker to help reduce wear. Lot’s of people like the Transgo shift kit but it’s a more aggressive shift. Since my goal was improved wear not high performance I went with the Superior. If I was looking to turn it into a race truck I’d have used the Transgo. I think any shift kit can be adjusted to be more aggressive or milder, depending on what you want. I also had him put the 1-2 ‘Vette servo in. From the look of some threads I’ve read anyone who is a little handy can do it themselves but I had my mechanic do it while he was working on it. There are lots of threads in here dealing with the ‘Vette servo, do a search and I’m sure you’ll find enough to keep you busy all afternoon. The ‘Vette servo has a larger surface area than the stock servo, this means more apply pressure and therefore a firmer 1-2 shift. You can get the servo online or at a transmission repair shop. With the gaskets it’s under 20 bucks, one of the best bang for your buck mods you can find. I’ve also been told there is another servo that can be replaced and if you do both you can do without the shift kit. My ‘Ho came with a factory auxiliary cooler but it was tiny so I replaced it with a larger one. If you can afford it you can run Royal Purple transmission fluid. With the rebuild I had to replace all the fluid and that was more than I could afford at the time with RP so I used OEM. If a person was going to do a pan drop and filter change that would be a good time to sweeten the stock fluid up with the RP. A custom tune can also adjust line pressure and shift points to once again make it as harsh or soft as you want. Anyway, that may be more than you were looking for but that’s my two cents worth FWIW.
