On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 17:07:56 -0500, Steve wrote:
Dave Hinz wrote:

When mine failed, I found that the "years of development" included
changing the name of the transmission twice, while not changing the,
what, 5 fatal flaws causing distinct failure modes.

"Ultradrive" was a short-lived marketing term,
A-604 from the start,
, and the A-604 became the 41TE

OK, I see that as 3 names, which I thought was my original point, but
whatever.

As for design changes- other folks here have enumerated the hardware and
software changes over the years. But most of them really weren't
necessary-

Riiiiight, because, dammit, differential pins _should_ be expected to
grenade. It's a _feature_, not a problem. I see.

my first-flight (1993) unmodified 42LE went 150,000 miles
because I a) kept the right fluid in it,

The dealer did all the upkeep on it. So, one would expect that this was
the case with mine - and the failed ones of my coworkers.

and b) didn't let anyone
rebuild it when a $30 sensor failed (the actual cause of 99% of the the
alleged "failures" of the 41TE/42LE family).

Can you provide a cite for your 99% figure? It looks to me to be,
what's the term? Oh yeah, "pulled out of your ass". A breakdown of the
failure modes, since you seem to have the statistics, would be oh ever
so welcome.

Are you one of the engineers responsible for this abomination, or why
are you defending the heap of **** in question so vehemently, please?