The car is a 2009 CTS V and the car/trans has 40k miles on it, only the past 6-7k was modded and it is rarely driven hard (yet) as I've had it apart in the garage off and on working motor stuff and it sat all winter. I had it at the track one time for 6 passes and it has always performed fine. The problem showed up a month ago in the midst of tuning the PCM. As the title states, it flares going into 4, 5, and 6 whether downshifting or upshifting and even while in gear. My tuner had me go to the dealer and have the '12 calibrations flashed into it with the MDI. I went and did that and I thought the problem went away but the 2-3 and 3-4 was harsh. My tuner tried to soften it up a little and it went right back to flaring.
Tuning history on the trans was this, it was done first with EFI Live and the trans ran fine, then I got HPT and it was tuned locally and the PCM tune was great but the TCM tune was too harsh, so I'd loaded up another TCM tune that was done by another guy and ran that for a couple months and it was just fine too but the torq mgmt was off, so I wanted to have it all re-done at once since I'd changed the pulley and needed to retune the PCM anyway. So, prior to this there was no history of the trans acting up and when it started acting up this time, we were making no changes to the TCM, just PCM tuning. So, it was no fault of the tuner.
Went back to the dealer and had the fluid topped off/checked but it was barely low. I looked/smelled the fluid and it wasn't burnt and there didn't seem to be any particles coming out when they over-flowed it to top it off. I tried to have them reflash the '12 calibrations with the MDI and it wouldn't take apparently since it already showed the most recent number in the TCM. I've been talking to my tuner, Circle D about the possibility of hard part failure like 4-5-6 clutch packs or the TCM/solenoid, and most recently started searching to learn more about the trans itself as its like the Bermuda Triangle in there to me.
Both Circle D and Chris here said it didn't look like stock pressures etc were in the TCM tune. I went back and compared the file I read from the TCM re'flash with the MDI and what I sent them, and that was what I pulled from the TCM at the dealer? That might mean the TCM is bad and that was what my tuner was guessing too but he said he's only seen that happen once before. Circle D on the other hand thought it might be the clutch packs but he wants to see some more logs too. Between having the clutch packs go out and the TCM needing replaced, I'm hoping for the TCM since it can be done with the trans in the car and it's only a $400 part plus labor. I'm planning to go to the CD trans eventually, but am hoping to make it to winter again at least for the downtime.
So, here is a log of the flaring. Let me know if you see anything out of the ordinary. My tuner sent me a log to attempt to fix the flaring with modified TCM tune and I've also copied the stock TCM tune from the car originally that I'm going to attempt to "write entire" to and then read entire to see if the TCM took it and compare the read file to the attempted uploaded file. I'm also trying to get the most recent beta version of HPT as soon as I can get my website login problems addressed. Then I can do the site recommended reset to try to clear out all of the presets.