I got it working. I did check the direct clutch and the seperator plate gasket was the correct one. I removed the valve body and spool valves and checked for contamination, I found nothing. I did upgrade the accumulator to the dual o-ring one. From an engineering perspective this revised part is a substantial change from the original. I'm not sure if the better accumulator made the difference or if a more intense valve body cleaning did the trick. If I had to make a guess and even though I found nothing suspect the odds are the valvebody had an issue. It appears the accumulator is just a damper for the impulse in fluid pressure from the shift valve. In either case this forum was very helpful. I am happy to be get my old work truck on the road.
One more question; The parts guys at the tranny shop told me I didn't need to replace the steel plates if the were not burned. I did replace the burned ones in this tranny. Should all the steel plates be replaced or is that overkill? I mean if you don't resurface a manual pressure plate it fails very soon even if it's hand sanded.
