and here is another way you can end up with burn clutches even if the drum is not cracked.
The piston seal blows out then there is no pressure to squish the clutches together.

I believe you can test the seals by applying some compressed air into the piston plumbing port and making sure the piston doesn't leak.

 

Gotcha. I did some digging on what causes clutch failures...main things were use/abuse, low ATF levels, dirty ATF, dirty pores that don't allow enough ATF to get to clucthes, etc. Nothing mechanical in nature that I saw, but I only searched for about 20 min and these were the common themes.

FYI if you do yours, I followed as he really breaks it down and shows real time the full process. There are 5 videos in this series! Very detailed.

So far, the hardest/PITA part was just getting the thing out of the truck. The rebuild has been relatively easy compared to that.

But it's not back in and running, so we'll see.

Oh, I also bought a new torque converter...cause, well I'd rather fork over $170 then have to re-pull this transmission out again!

 

Alright did you take apart the
piston in the bottom of the drum that had the burnt clutch steels? If not you should at least pressure test with some air to make sure that's not your problem. Like you say it would suck to have to do it more than once.

 

This video shows the problem for these burnt clutches in their case was a bad piston seal.

Also, this rebuild page states the check ***** could get stuck and to free.

So yeah, going to take them back out and check.

 

Also, suggest the pressure regulator valve could be worn and cause burnt forward clutches as well.

 

also states piston seal as the cause.