First had forward band broken while I was waiting at intersection. 10k miles after rebuild transmission not working any more, not shifting to any gear. The GM 4T65E transmission is a joke and they are still using it on the new cars. Each every time friends asking me which car to buy i always say DO NOT BUY GM sh*t. The forward band broken is very common in the GM 4T65E transmission and never been categorized as recall. Highly suspect corruption going on there to to hide this real recall problem.

Went from the usual issues (hard shift and slips) with this car that started from before 100,000 miles and then grenaded the primary input carrier and the sun gear on a nice sunny fall day @ 204,000 miles. Ended up towing the car on a dolly and had it in a friends garage disassembled for several months getting parts together and tools to do a full rebuild.

The symptom of the failure was as follows, a loud clunk when I was starting off from a stop, MUCH louder than a normal hard shift! After that the transmission would no longer go into reverse and was constantly in a forward gear.

Later I would discover that since the transmission ate a planetary gear and its bearings and thrust washer (all hardened steel parts) that it had also exploded the hardened steel carrier that would be locked into the one way clutch that allowed it to go into reverse, thus only going forwards since it had locked up the input carrier.

On craigslist is is common to see these rebuilt for $700 with a core transmission.

From all of my research these transmissions usually have other issues, like worn seals, blown gaskets, etc.

Overall the full disassembly process for rebuild takes 4 days worth of solid work. That is getting the car lifted up high enough to drop out the sub assembly with transmission. And getting it tore down to start inspecting. The final assembly takes about 5 days after you get in a full rebuild kit and any other hard parts and rebuild manual from ATSE for the 4T65E. Keep in mind from experience these manuals are a bit out of date if you have a later model 4t65e as they upgraded components in these and they do not exactly match the manual part for part. I also had an issue with some of the torque specs and snapping two of the internal bolts during re-assembly/install of the valve body and pump housing. Even under the torque spec it snapped the grade 8 M6 bolts which I was not expecting to happen.

They updated the layout of the valve body and some of the sensors.

On my personal scale this was a complex and long tedious job to do. My car sat on jack stands for 6 months while getting together all of the parts for final assembly and cleaning of all of what was left of the parts that were ate I might update with pictures and video links since I have them.

I would probably not recommend anyone that is normal to do a trans rebuild unless you are the type that also does engine rebuilds, it is roughly that complex and you should buy several special purpose GM only trans tools for mounting the transmission while working on it, and for checking tolerances on the internals of the transmission, as end play tolerances are very specific and critical to the transmission working as expected. The other fun part is how big of a mess taking apart the transmission is since it holds over 3.5 GALLONS of transmission fluid!

Some other notes of car assembly and disassembly: You will need several jacks( I used two bottle jacks, 2 regular 2 ton garbage jacks), jack stands 6, a work bench, two drip sheet pans, a crane (1 ton) , load leveler, wood blocks, impact tools, special size sockets (20, 18) which are not the most common for wrench sizes and socket sizes. And the list goes on. You will need to play with the load leveler if you plan on just dropping out the transmission without the engine, this is real difficult to do. If you can jack up the front of the car far enough you can drop out the engine and transmission after you disconnect everything that attaches to the car body like harnesses and piping for coolant, trans oil, power steering, etc. If you don't want to do all of that or your can't jack up the car much higher than 28" of clearance from the top of the inner fender that goes into the engine bay (remember you have to be able to drag out the transmission from the driver side while it is on the aluminum subframe)...

My recommendation is as follows: Find a cheap rebuilt on craigslist or local shop. Find a mechanic that you trust if you aren't going to do the work yourself and save some money on this.

If all of the crap that I listed out which is only 1/4 of the overall process sounds fun or doable do it, you'll save labor costs but spend 80-120 hours if you are working by yourself. Expect to have a disabled car for a few weekends to get this done and get all of the parts. Also these are old cars now and you'll probably find a dozen other things that need done since you'll have 1/4 of the car taken apart!

Have fun, good luck, be careful, a dry 4T65E weighs 230 pounds dry!

As a side note I never expected it to run for 100,00 miles after having all of the normal expected problems of this transmission.

Where do I start with this car? I got it in 2005 NEW, I loved it for the first three years after that it has been down hill from there. When my car hit 68000 miles everything seemed to start failing on me. First it was my speedometer that failed,then my horn stopped working. After that my transmission went at 72000 that was $2000 but not done at the dealership they wanted $4500. My steering wheel started to squeak when I make a turn.So you think that it would be all but NO it's not. Then I needed a thermostat at 8000 miles, not even a week later I needed a new water pump. Now my car is miss firing, and I need a new timing change. What a POS car. This car is the most money hungry car I have ever had in my life, and I have had some bad ones. But to pay all that money to buy the car you would think it was a good one. I WILL NEVER BUY A CHEVY AGAIN.

Well Everyone...my 2005 Chevrolet Impala FINALLY took a sh*t on me. After a year of complaining of my transmission slipping now and then, and them telling me they retrieved NO code and that they test drove it and it drove fine.....BS! It's got 147K on it now...I drive about 80 miles round trip to work every week day....so I put on a lot of miles. But the fact that i've been complaining about the transmission and nobody seeming to know what is wrong with it just pisses me off. They day before yesterday i was driving home from work about 75-80 MPH on the freeway and it started shuddering. I got scared to I dropped my speed down to 60 MPH. It felt like the transmission was running rough, and the thought of it locking or seizing on the freeway scared the sh*t out of me. What the point in taking it in...they're just gonna tell me the SAME BS..."We ran a diag on it and came up with no codes, even test drove it and it was fine"...that SAME STORY. Well, i had to drive it to work yesterday and it ran fine...until the ride home. Something was definitely wrong this time because I can hear something rattling in the transmission, and when i turned to the next street it shuddered and the wheels squealed and it felt like the car was stuck by something. then i also noticed it was not shifting out of 2nd gear.....This is it fellas...i was telling myself. I nursed the car home going 40 MPH...at some points it would run fine and would get up to 50...then it would start changing gears on its own....seemed like it kept going from 3rd to 4th gear constantly. When i got home.....I made plans to take it in AGAIN....but when i turned the corner to my street....the car started to overheat. When i shut it off, I opened the hood to see what was going on. then i noticed Oily water started gushing out from the passenger side under the car. I checked the oil level on my dipstick and there is no sign of oil in the engine....then tonight I opened up the radiator and it had oil residue inside. I still don't know where the leak is coming from. The Transmission? Engine.....at this point i don't even care anymore. After reading this you might think im negligent....but if you owned this car....you would totally understand.

2nd and 4th gear failed and had to replace torque converter at 60,000 miles. The first transmission service is not even recommended until 75,000 miles. It started when I checked my transmission fluid and it was very dark, almost black. I took the car in and got a transmission flush. BAD IDEA!! Two days after I did that, the transmission failed. I took my car into AAMCO to have the transmission fixed. I do not recommend AAMCO for ANYTHING! They quoted me $1800. When all was said and done the final charge was $3500. Not only that but I was without my car for almost 2 weeks! I have done research online and found many other people that have had the exact transmission failure in their '05 Impala's. Between bad thermostats, heater/ac blower failures, and transmissions breaking down, I will never buy another Chevy car. BEWARE!

i have an 05 Chevy impala that i thought was very reliable. one day my husband was driving to the cemetery to visit a relatives grave and before he got there couple of mile away the stupid piece of isht just turned off on him out of no where.he had to pay a tow truck to tow it back to a shop where they said there was a problem with the tranny. luckily again my extended warranty covered it i only shelled out $100 deductible being that with out the warranty i would've been caught up with around 3 grand out of pocket to fix the isht. this was frustrating because my car was out of commission for 1 wk 1/2 and it still goes nuts every now and then. this impala seemed like a comfortable reliable car but i was wrong about the tech problems..... such a headache...

Transmission failure on 2005 Impala. AAMCO charged $2800+. After three removals and repairs, they finally got it right. Car was out of commission for three weeks. GM covered half of the charges after I got very angry with them . That car was totaled (deer collision) in May 2008.

Purchased 2006 Impala as a replacement. Last week, I started experiencing the same problems with the transmission. Took it to dealer this time. I heard today that the transmission must be replaced with a rebuilt. My extended warranty will pay, but the car will have been out of commission for at least one week.

What is up with Chevy? I've always bought GM, but no more.

Driving home from work late on night my trans just decided it was not working anymore. The damn thing went out as i was going up a small hill. The rpms shot up and from about 7 miles from home thank god it didn't happen a few months earlier in nc 500 miles from home. I had to limp it home at about 20 mph. It sucked riding the shoulder hoping to make it home before i get pulled over for going to slow or some sh*t just to add to my frustration. I have had a few estimates but have not had done yet. Most are 2000 and up. I would love to have my car running on these hot days when i need some ac and don't have it cuz my car is a lawn ornament.

soooo i sell my 2002 impala 3.4 for $5,500 with 87k miles. shifting was getting a lil rough but it was in overall decent shape but i sold it to get something newer with less miles. so i take that 5.5k and go to a dealership and put down on a 2005 impala 3.4 with 41k miles. i offer him 9k and he accepts. anyways on way home... speedometer goes out of whack and sticks on 140 mph even when im stopped.... and so when i get my oil change the next day at the Chevy dealership the problem with the speedometer wasn't showing (it went back to normal) and so they hooked up the diagnostics thing and found out i needed a new instrument cluster ... (300-400$ fix) oh and guess what they found a transmission code and told me that i was screwed and i neededa new transmission. at 41k miles... i am financing this piece of sh*t... and i don't got the money to fix it so im pretty screwed... the whole point of me getting this vehicle was to have a better more reliable car because my gf's car is just a Chevy cavalier 2003 but it has 105k miles on it and its transmission is not doing so hot ... so now i got 2 unreliable vehicles and both have car payments and neither are under any kind of warranty. Chevy can now lick my ass. . i just replaced my transmission filter, and oil and put a bottle of lucas transmission fix in it... (helped a lil with all that) but overall this cars trans is not gonna last long at all because its still slipping pretty bad. worst part is... when i test drove it ... it was fine. i wish i could turn back time and bought that honda accord i was lookin at....