In 1961 my dad bought an Impala with the 283 V8. It never gave any trouble. We drove that car through one engine rebuild around 60K miles. Several of my brothers drove this car mercilessly, but it never had a problem. Much later, I mentioned this to a Chevy mechanic, who said the problem was overheating. This was particularly a problem when mated with the 348 V8 with it’s higher compression, and A/C. The Triple Turbine transmission was introduced in late 1957 by Chevy, and was standard in Buick’s Limited model displacing the Dynaflow. All divisions discontinued it by the end of the 1961 model year..
My dad's '58 Chevy had a Turboglide mated to a 283. He also had a spare Turboglide in the garage just in case. Unfortunately, I was too young to appreciate how it shifted before he traded it in on a Vega.
The Turboglide & Buick's Flight Pitch looked good on paper, but, had lots of issues. GM also went backwards in reliability on the Roto Hydramatic versus the Dual Coupling Hydramatic before it.
A great idea, shame they couldn't work all the bugs out. I have seen one of the '58 Impala with a 348 and Turboglide. The owner said it was completely smooth.
I remember how the "POWER GLIDE" trans. took its share of criticism also, they were called "POWERSLIDE/ SLIP&SLIDE.". if you wanted a good hard/ firm shift, just disconnect the modulator valve, and the trans will live a very long life without frying the low band/ high clutch pack/ reverse clutch pack. also my '65 chevy has the rear output shaft oil pump, so it can be push started!!!!.
Your friend is wrong. The Ford-O-Matic is really a 3 speed but when you started out in Drive, it started in 2nd gear and shifted to high. If you started in Low, it would start in 1st gear and then you shifted the lever into drive, it would automatically shift into 2nd and then 3rd. The down shift was from 3rd to 2nd. No 4th gear. The GM Hydramatics were 4 speeds. I have owned several Cadillacs of the 40's and 50's with Hydramatics.
@@packard5682 Ford-O-Matic was the 2-speed. Cruise-O-Matic was the 3 speed. But I believe that changed moving into the 1960's. Ford-O-Matic and Merc-O-Matic were the budget 2 speeds and essentially, the same thing. Yes, GM Hydramatics were 4 speeds.
@@ostrich67 Correct. I have a '55 Thunderbird with the Ford-O-Matic. It is a three speed box, but uses a second-gear start, unless you manually start in "Low" gear, or floor the accelerator from rest. These boxes were designed by Borg-Warner, and were built under license by Ford. Studebaker also used the same box in the Avanti, with a slightly different control scheme.
Chevy's Turboglide was the same as Buick's Dynaflow. Behind the fancy five-element torque converter was a standard 2-speed Powerglide, which provided reverse gear and a lower "Grade" 1st gear, which was used only when selected, not during normal acceleration.
I feel like it was a good concept and in general, a good system, they just didn’t spend enough time to work out all the bugs, and the bad reputation kind of snuffed it out completely. Kind of like the Chevrolet Corvair or the Ford Edsel.
And that was the point! It was supposed to be smooth and seamless. That's what they thought the public wanted. It was discontinued because the transmission could not be built beefy enough to handle the torque of the new engines. I don't think TurboGlide was ever offered on the 409. Maybe the lo-po single 4-barrel 409, but certainly never on the Dual Quad or Solid lifter engines. Those were 3-speed or 4-speed only.
@@That_AMC_Guy Ok so heres the thing ... I am at some point in the near future going to be building an RV, but a pretty sorta 50s era atomic age sorta vibe ... Im all about the cosmetic side of things but still learning mechanics .. so what motor and transmission would you say would be a good one for seamless gearshift? If I were to give a rough idea of the dimensions it would be about the same height as a VW Kombi, a little wider a good meter longer but with a heavy duty chassis and will probably be C.O.E
There shitty is why. My buddy had a hott Cutless with a 383 & Turboglide racing trans that went down every few oil changes. When it worked it was pretty fast. For a small block; it had a little party trick up its sleeve. Could break the tires at 60 and hold it till 80 smoking the hwy! Then after that we had no ideal how fast were going since the speedo stops at 85.
You're thinking of a Powerglide which was a common racing automatic. There is a company making a Powerglide clone racing auto called TurboGlide 400 but it has nothing to do with the the Turboglide in the video. Few '57-'61 cars were optioned with Turboglides and even fewer Turboglides made it out of the 60's. Mechanics didn't like working on them and they weren't paragons of reliability. When they broke, they were generally replaced with a different transmission model and scrapped instead of being repaired or rebuilt.
Michael no it’s not. A CVT uses cones and belts to create infinitesimal ratios during acceleration. This Turboglide was equipped with a special torque converter with the ability to multiply torque in such a way that you could leave the actual transmission in a single forward range and never have to shift. However, the transmission itself DID have a low forward range you could manually select.
@@NZDC69 They had cones to!. I built transmissions 30+ yrs,I didn't do t glides but my mentor told me about them,He built them but most were replaced with powerglides😊
Usually due to lack of service. Chrysler's Torqueflite used to boast of practically no service interval. GM transmissions or Ford for that matter could offer the same luxury.
The TurboGlide transmission was an experimental all aluminum cased triple turbine CONTINUOUSLY VARIABLE transmission meaning you never actually felt a distinct "shift" like you would in the 2 speed more popular PowerGlide cast iron cased transmission of the time. GM offered this transmission for around 3 years then because of reliability issues discontinued it. I own a 57 Chevrolet Bel Air 4 door sedan and she has the "Super Turbo Fire" package which includes the "Power Pack" package along with this TurboGlide transmission. Fully functional/operational and is a real pleasure to drive and show off to unsuspecting passengers waiting for that first shift!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA!
The Turboglide wasn't exactly a continuously variable transmission but rather a concurrently geared transmission although the effect is almost the same. All three turbines in the torque converter were were coupled to the output shaft at the same time. The difference was that the first two were set on one way sprags that caused them to free spin whenever the max turbine speed was reached and not impede the rotation of the central shaft. Therefore the transmission was always perfectly coupled to engine power. A Turboglide starts out in 1-2-3 mode then moves to 2-3 mode and finally to 3 mode.
It isn’t a CVT because a CVT has an infinite amount of ratios where the torque converter can achieve lockup. Obviously, they didn’t have CVT in the 50’s, and Turboglide is definitely the most comparable thing to CVT from that era. However, it doesn’t fairly compare to CVT not because of the smoothness, but because if the torque converter was to lockup, (providing there was a lockup mechanism) the turboglide would be limited to 3 ratios (which would make it the equivalent of a 3 speed automatic)
Idk about that... there is an old lady that owns a 1957 Chevy car she bought in 1957 brand new She’s had very little issues out of it The car (according to the video I was watching) had/has the same tranny. So I googled it and found this video lol
They are great transmissions if you service them frequently and don't expect a whole lot of performance out of them. You wouldn't go drag racing with anything with a Turboglide or it's corporate cousin, the Dynaflow. For every day use, they are fantastic and smooth. But as engines became more powerful, they couldn't build the Turboglide Big enough or Beefy enough and still CHEAP enough to mass produce. You never saw a TurboGlide behind a 409. They couldn't handle the torque. Not to mention, it was just silly for every corporation under the GM umbrella to have two or three transmissions of their own. It didn't make sense. Not to mention, with the debut of Chrysler's Torqueflite in 1956, it was so simple, durable, reliable and strong that every other corporation was scrambling to catch up. Big GM put all their money into the new TurboHydraMatic which, is better than Power/TurboGlide but still nowhere near as comparable as Torqueflite. For instance, Torqueflite used to boast about it's service life of next to never. The 100,000-mile service interval is simply a recommendation. TurboHydraMatic used to at very least need band adjustment every 25,000-30,000 miles. FMX / Ford-O-Matic / Cruise-O-Matic had 20,000-mile intervals.
@@That_AMC_Guy Great comment, the original TorqueFlite was really a decade or two ahead of its time and still relevant today. Modern automatics are just a slight improvement on the design that Chrysler nailed back in the 50s. Even though it ended up being a dead end, the Turboglide was a really interesting diversion along the path of automatic transmission evolution, and I'd love to drive one just to see what it's like.
@@doctorzaius4084 I'd take a TurboGlide over a Dynaflow any day. Dynaflow drives like a variable ratio tranny.... or like a golf cart. Stomp the pedal, engine tachs up and just sits there while road speed gradually increases. It's a strange feeling in a full-size car and does NOTHING to help fuel economy. Even the switch-pitch torque converter they added in later years didn't help. TurboGlide seemed like a natural progression at the time. 99% of the wear in an automatic is on the bands. But if the bands RELEASE instead of apply, then there (in theory) should be no wear. As smooth as the transmission is, because of it's design, you lose the ability to engine brake (there is actually a gear position to do this instead) it requires the MOST power at take-off usually when engines produce the least power and as time marched on and band material improved.... there really became no benefit to TurboGlide. Driving one is weird, but I suppose by 1950's standards - anybody who had a free-wheeling Dodge or Studebaker would feel right at home. Release the throttle and the car just glides away with no engine braking. Shifting is almost imperceptible. What I found most distracting on TurboGlide was it almost felt like the engine got more powerful as you progressed through the "gears". In Low, all 3 forward bands are applied. In "2nd" only two and in direct, only one. So, as the transmission goes through it's paces, parasitic loss decreases. But, this has the strange benefit of making the engine feel UNresponsive in low gear to being VERY responsive in high gear. Passing is difficult again because the load increases as you downshift.
Do you nitwitts always have to drag politics into every subject?? Nobody thinks you are smart and most know you are an idiot so stop it! I will explain it to you so you can u n d e r s t a n d what Oilcan was saying. I am typing really slow so you can fully absorb the meaning of his statement. Oilcan's statement is that the Turboglide's design may have been based on the Buick Dynaflow and the Chevy design was not a successful one. The Dynaflow was ok but not very efficient and from the first in 1948, every year they made improvements. In 1958, Buick came out with the 'Flight Pitch Turbine' Dynaflow to make it's performance much better. It was standard on the Roadmaster 75 & Limited cars and optional with the rest of the models. It was further improved for 59 and called 'The Triple Turbine' and was optional on all Buick models. The design had a lot of problems and I have talked to some mechanics that worked on them and the were prone to frequent failures and in the end, most were replaced by the standard 'Twin Turbine' Dynaflow. The Turbo-Glide was no better and probably worse. I had a 60 Chevy with a Turbo-glide and yes, it was smooth but it really was inefficient and my 283 engine would get about 12 miles per gallon. I knew a Chevy dealer who sold these Chevys with the Turbo-Glide and he said they failed so regularly, that they would replace them with Power-Glides to avoid the problem. Some friends of mine have an original low mileage 57 Bel AIr with a Turbo-Glide and it operates flawlessly! Maybe 1 in a million was good. So in reality, Chevy came out with the Triple Turbine first in 57 and maybe the guys a Buick thought that they could improve the design and come up with their own 'improved' version. Neither one was good.
The Torboglide was a garbage transmission offered between 1957 and 1961. Why, I can’t imagine? People that compared them to Dynaflows are partially right as to their operation. Dynaflows didn’t break! Turboglides were nothing but trouble! Transmission shops hated them and most were converted to Powerglide. POS transmissions!
My dad worked at a Chevrolet dealership in those days. He and others called this transmission the" Troubleglide".
My dads family had one in a '59 Chevy, he referred to it as the "Terrible Glide"
What went wrong with them exactly?
@@Michael-hz2pl everything...a bad design good concept
In 1961 my dad bought an Impala with the 283 V8. It never gave any trouble. We drove that car through one engine rebuild around 60K miles. Several of my brothers drove this car mercilessly, but it never had a problem. Much later, I mentioned this to a Chevy mechanic, who said the problem was overheating. This was particularly a problem when mated with the 348 V8 with it’s higher compression, and A/C. The Triple Turbine transmission was introduced in late 1957 by Chevy, and was standard in Buick’s Limited model displacing the Dynaflow. All divisions discontinued it by the end of the 1961 model year..
...especially when GM would introduce Turbo Hydra-matic transmission four years later to the best of my knowledge.
My dad's '58 Chevy had a Turboglide mated to a 283. He also had a spare Turboglide in the garage just in case. Unfortunately, I was too young to appreciate how it shifted before he traded it in on a Vega.
ouch!
Oh no,
Vega …. Once bitten, twice shy …
On a Vega? 😂😂😂 Out of the frying pan & into the fire!
The Turboglide & Buick's Flight Pitch looked good on paper, but, had lots of issues. GM also went backwards in reliability on the Roto Hydramatic versus the Dual Coupling Hydramatic before it.
A great idea, shame they couldn't work all the bugs out. I have seen one of the '58 Impala with a 348 and Turboglide. The owner said it was completely smooth.
Buick&Olds had a feature called variable pitch changed pitch in tor converter. Dynaflo done that as well.
I remember how the "POWER GLIDE" trans. took its share of criticism also, they were called "POWERSLIDE/ SLIP&SLIDE.". if you wanted a good hard/ firm shift, just disconnect the modulator valve, and the trans will live a very long life without frying the low band/ high clutch pack/ reverse clutch pack. also my '65 chevy has the rear output shaft oil pump, so it can be push started!!!!.
The self destructing slipomatic.
A friend said his dad's Ford-O-Matic was a 4-speed. "It has first, second, third, and passing gear."
Your friend is wrong. The Ford-O-Matic is really a 3 speed but when you started out in Drive, it started in 2nd gear and shifted to high. If you started in Low, it would start in 1st gear and then you shifted the lever into drive, it would automatically shift into 2nd and then 3rd. The down shift was from 3rd to 2nd. No 4th gear. The GM Hydramatics were 4 speeds. I have owned several Cadillacs of the 40's and 50's with Hydramatics.
@@packard5682 Ford-O-Matic was the 2-speed. Cruise-O-Matic was the 3 speed. But I believe that changed moving into the 1960's. Ford-O-Matic and Merc-O-Matic were the budget 2 speeds and essentially, the same thing. Yes, GM Hydramatics were 4 speeds.
@@That_AMC_Guy The first Ford-O-Matic was indeed a three speed. The later Ford-O was a 2-speed designed for the Falcon and was the budget trans.
@@ostrich67 Correct. I have a '55 Thunderbird with the Ford-O-Matic. It is a three speed box, but uses a second-gear start, unless you manually start in "Low" gear, or floor the accelerator from rest. These boxes were designed by Borg-Warner, and were built under license by Ford. Studebaker also used the same box in the Avanti, with a slightly different control scheme.
Chevy's Turboglide was the same as Buick's Dynaflow. Behind the fancy five-element torque converter was a standard 2-speed Powerglide, which provided reverse gear and a lower "Grade" 1st gear, which was used only when selected, not during normal acceleration.
Not at all. The PowerGlide and TurboGlide share no parts. TurboGlide has 3 ranges, PowerGlide only 2. Did you not watch the film?
Cousin to the Dynaflow.
I feel like it was a good concept and in general, a good system, they just didn’t spend enough time to work out all the bugs, and the bad reputation kind of snuffed it out completely. Kind of like the Chevrolet Corvair or the Ford Edsel.
the corvair had a 9 year run before it was replaced by the "RUST BUCKET VEGA".
It was a multi million dollar flop. They finally discontinued it. Shifted like a Dyna Flow
Dyna Slow
And that was the point! It was supposed to be smooth and seamless. That's what they thought the public wanted. It was discontinued because the transmission could not be built beefy enough to handle the torque of the new engines. I don't think TurboGlide was ever offered on the 409. Maybe the lo-po single 4-barrel 409, but certainly never on the Dual Quad or Solid lifter engines. Those were 3-speed or 4-speed only.
@@That_AMC_Guy Ok so heres the thing ... I am at some point in the near future going to be building an RV, but a pretty sorta 50s era atomic age sorta vibe ... Im all about the cosmetic side of things but still learning mechanics .. so what motor and transmission would you say would be a good one for seamless gearshift?
If I were to give a rough idea of the dimensions it would be about the same height as a VW Kombi, a little wider a good meter longer but with a heavy duty chassis and will probably be C.O.E
Say what you want, they were smooth.
so is diarrhea !🤣
"See the USA in your Chevrolet!"
I'm confused, never heard of Turboglide, heard of hydramatic, powerglide and turbo hydramatic, also Buick's dynaflow.
There shitty is why. My buddy had a hott Cutless with a 383 & Turboglide racing trans that went down every few oil changes. When it worked it was pretty fast. For a small block; it had a little party trick up its sleeve. Could break the tires at 60 and hold it till 80 smoking the hwy! Then after that we had no ideal how fast were going since the speedo stops at 85.
You're thinking of a Powerglide which was a common racing automatic. There is a company making a Powerglide clone racing auto called TurboGlide 400 but it has nothing to do with the the Turboglide in the video. Few '57-'61 cars were optioned with Turboglides and even fewer Turboglides made it out of the 60's. Mechanics didn't like working on them and they weren't paragons of reliability. When they broke, they were generally replaced with a different transmission model and scrapped instead of being repaired or rebuilt.
JayeK47
So basically, turbo glide is a 1950’s version of today’s Nissan CVT
Michael no it’s not. A CVT uses cones and belts to create infinitesimal ratios during acceleration. This Turboglide was equipped with a special torque converter with the ability to multiply torque in such a way that you could leave the actual transmission in a single forward range and never have to shift. However, the transmission itself DID have a low forward range you could manually select.
@@NZDC69 They had cones to!. I built transmissions 30+ yrs,I didn't do t glides but my mentor told me about them,He built them but most were replaced with powerglides😊
They had a nasty habit of dying with no notice. You'd drive to the store, and when you came back and put it in gear to drive home, it wouldn't move.
Usually due to lack of service. Chrysler's Torqueflite used to boast of practically no service interval. GM transmissions or Ford for that matter could offer the same luxury.
Heat.. the auto nemesis
Heat.. the auto nemesis
The TurboGlide transmission was an experimental all aluminum cased triple turbine CONTINUOUSLY VARIABLE transmission meaning you never actually felt a distinct "shift" like you would in the 2 speed more popular PowerGlide cast iron cased transmission of the time. GM offered this transmission for around 3 years then because of reliability issues discontinued it. I own a 57 Chevrolet Bel Air 4 door sedan and she has the "Super Turbo Fire" package which includes the "Power Pack" package along with this TurboGlide transmission.
Fully functional/operational and is a real pleasure to drive and show off to unsuspecting passengers waiting for that first shift!!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHA!
The Turboglide wasn't exactly a continuously variable transmission but rather a concurrently geared transmission although the effect is almost the same. All three turbines in the torque converter were were coupled to the output shaft at the same time. The difference was that the first two were set on one way sprags that caused them to free spin whenever the max turbine speed was reached and not impede the rotation of the central shaft. Therefore the transmission was always perfectly coupled to engine power. A Turboglide starts out in 1-2-3 mode then moves to 2-3 mode and finally to 3 mode.
ThirdGenUSA You will laugh until it breaks! No modern trans shop will know how to fix it and you will end up
Converting it to a reliable Powerglide!
It isn’t a CVT because a CVT has an infinite amount of ratios where the torque converter can achieve lockup.
Obviously, they didn’t have CVT in the 50’s, and Turboglide is definitely the most comparable thing to CVT from that era. However, it doesn’t fairly compare to CVT not because of the smoothness, but because if the torque converter was to lockup, (providing there was a lockup mechanism) the turboglide would be limited to 3 ratios (which would make it the equivalent of a 3 speed automatic)
I am 71, these transmissions were crap. The powerglide was more reliable
Idk about that... there is an old lady that owns a 1957 Chevy car she bought in 1957 brand new
She’s had very little issues out of it
The car (according to the video I was watching) had/has the same tranny.
So I googled it and found this video lol
They are great transmissions if you service them frequently and don't expect a whole lot of performance out of them. You wouldn't go drag racing with anything with a Turboglide or it's corporate cousin, the Dynaflow. For every day use, they are fantastic and smooth. But as engines became more powerful, they couldn't build the Turboglide Big enough or Beefy enough and still CHEAP enough to mass produce. You never saw a TurboGlide behind a 409. They couldn't handle the torque. Not to mention, it was just silly for every corporation under the GM umbrella to have two or three transmissions of their own. It didn't make sense.
Not to mention, with the debut of Chrysler's Torqueflite in 1956, it was so simple, durable, reliable and strong that every other corporation was scrambling to catch up. Big GM put all their money into the new TurboHydraMatic which, is better than Power/TurboGlide but still nowhere near as comparable as Torqueflite.
For instance, Torqueflite used to boast about it's service life of next to never. The 100,000-mile service interval is simply a recommendation.
TurboHydraMatic used to at very least need band adjustment every 25,000-30,000 miles. FMX / Ford-O-Matic / Cruise-O-Matic had 20,000-mile intervals.
@@That_AMC_Guy Great comment, the original TorqueFlite was really a decade or two ahead of its time and still relevant today. Modern automatics are just a slight improvement on the design that Chrysler nailed back in the 50s.
Even though it ended up being a dead end, the Turboglide was a really interesting diversion along the path of automatic transmission evolution, and I'd love to drive one just to see what it's like.
@@doctorzaius4084 I'd take a TurboGlide over a Dynaflow any day. Dynaflow drives like a variable ratio tranny.... or like a golf cart. Stomp the pedal, engine tachs up and just sits there while road speed gradually increases. It's a strange feeling in a full-size car and does NOTHING to help fuel economy. Even the switch-pitch torque converter they added in later years didn't help.
TurboGlide seemed like a natural progression at the time. 99% of the wear in an automatic is on the bands. But if the bands RELEASE instead of apply, then there (in theory) should be no wear. As smooth as the transmission is, because of it's design, you lose the ability to engine brake (there is actually a gear position to do this instead) it requires the MOST power at take-off usually when engines produce the least power and as time marched on and band material improved.... there really became no benefit to TurboGlide.
Driving one is weird, but I suppose by 1950's standards - anybody who had a free-wheeling Dodge or Studebaker would feel right at home. Release the throttle and the car just glides away with no engine braking. Shifting is almost imperceptible. What I found most distracting on TurboGlide was it almost felt like the engine got more powerful as you progressed through the "gears". In Low, all 3 forward bands are applied. In "2nd" only two and in direct, only one. So, as the transmission goes through it's paces, parasitic loss decreases.
But, this has the strange benefit of making the engine feel UNresponsive in low gear to being VERY responsive in high gear. Passing is difficult again because the load increases as you downshift.
Idea was great but quality and design flaws plagued those...
As I recall, the Buick Dynaslush was of a similar design. Or maybe this was based on that. Definitely not a successful design.
Do you nitwitts always have to drag politics into every subject?? Nobody thinks you are smart and most know you are an idiot so stop it! I will explain it to you so you can u n d e r s t a n d what Oilcan was saying. I am typing really slow so you can fully absorb the meaning of his statement. Oilcan's statement is that the Turboglide's design may have been based on the Buick Dynaflow and the Chevy design was not a successful one. The Dynaflow was ok but not very efficient and from the first in 1948, every year they made improvements. In 1958, Buick came out with the 'Flight Pitch Turbine' Dynaflow to make it's performance much better. It was standard on the Roadmaster 75 & Limited cars and optional with the rest of the models. It was further improved for 59 and called 'The Triple Turbine' and was optional on all Buick models. The design had a lot of problems and I have talked to some mechanics that worked on them and the were prone to frequent failures and in the end, most were replaced by the standard 'Twin Turbine' Dynaflow. The Turbo-Glide was no better and probably worse. I had a 60 Chevy with a Turbo-glide and yes, it was smooth but it really was inefficient and my 283 engine would get about 12 miles per gallon. I knew a Chevy dealer who sold these Chevys with the Turbo-Glide and he said they failed so regularly, that they would replace them with Power-Glides to avoid the problem. Some friends of mine have an original low mileage 57 Bel AIr with a Turbo-Glide and it operates flawlessly! Maybe 1 in a million was good. So in reality, Chevy came out with the Triple Turbine first in 57 and maybe the guys a Buick thought that they could improve the design and come up with their own 'improved' version. Neither one was good.
Renewable Oilcan Rim Dynaflows didn’t break!
Good enough to beat a corvette with a W head 348 in a brookwood station wagon!!! Key to long life keep fluid up and don,t work on it!
The Torboglide was a garbage transmission offered between 1957 and 1961. Why, I can’t imagine? People that compared them to Dynaflows are partially right as to their operation. Dynaflows didn’t break! Turboglides were nothing but trouble!
Transmission shops hated them and most were converted to Powerglide. POS transmissions!
turbo glide made way for the turbo 350...the 400....and all the other dirvatives since
the turbo glide was junk.
POS , the powerglide much better