Torque converter question

1984 t-type

Murphy's Law
Joined
Jul 11, 2010
Need help selecting a torque converter, I had Janis rebuild and install a stage 1 in my car recently and he said he installed a re-stalled D5 converter with a 2500 stall speed. I cant remember my cam specs right now but i have a mild cam, ported heads, precision plenum, 5858 turbo, 3'' RJC downpipe, 80lb injectors, running E85. My plans are not a track car but just a good and quick street car something capable of running 11.5 or slightly faster if I did hit the drag strip, I also do a lot of highway cruising in it. what would be some good converter options for my setup, or should I just stick with what i have in there ? Also i dont know much about transmissions and converters so what exactly will a better converter do for me ?

Tahnks
 
@dvernst
Dvernst is using a non-lock 9.5" PTC 16 blade with that 5858 turbo on a stock TTA, running a best of 10.9 at around 120-121 IIRC. That's a premium torque converter with a hefty price tag, but it delivers the goods. A good torque converter is loose enough "down low" to get your turbo spooled up at the line, but then it grabs or "couples" very hard when the engine makes power/RPM. Slippage percentage "through the traps" is the measurable parameter you typically want to talk about when it comes to converter performance. Sloppy converters are 20-25% slip (or more!). Half-way decent converters are 10-15%. Good converters are substantially less than 10%.

then there's lock-ups.... which are another story. Multi-discs can deliver 0% slip when locked, but these units are usually very loose / sloppy when unlocked.
 
Advertised stall speeds don't mean too much, because different engines make different power.
But this one does this:
2900RPM @ 0 boost
3500RPM @ 6psi boost
 
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