Update: The night of the post above, I put the trans back in, hooked everything back up, filled it with fluids, jumped in to take a test drive, put in gear..................nothing.
It was late and I didn't want to bother the neighbors, so I just pushed it back in the garage and went to bed. I tried it again the next morning and still nothing. I talked with the trans builder and he said it didn't make any since, but maybe it was low on fluid. I added another quart. This time it barely went into gear, but wouldn't pull. After the fluid warmed up, it wouldn't do anything again. I left it alone over the weekend.
Monday morning, I fired it up and put it in gear. It seemed to want to work, then it ran out of gas.
I went on to work, took a gas can and got some gas on my lunch break. After work, put 5Gal of gas in it, fired it up and went for a test drive. It took gear and seemed to pull ok in the driveway, but when I pulled into the street and gave it gas it slipped real bad. So, I turned around and took it back home. I called the builder again, and told him I would just bring the whole truck and let him figure out what was going on. I took it him last Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, he said it was losing line pressure when the fluid warmed up, so he was going to have to drop it again.
He finally got it pulled out on Thursday evening and determined the filter was clogged
When we first dropped the pan when he had to remove the valve body, there was some moisture in the fluid and some black sludge in the pan. It wasn't enough to cause alarm, but enough to take note of. Apparently, enough of that got into the filter to clog it. It also caused a few clutches to slip, so he had to put a clutch pack in it.
He's not been able to get it back in, so he's going to let me come up this afternoon and we will reinstall it together. At least this way, he can make sure everything is working right and get my TV cable adjusted correctly. Hopefully, I'll have a good report in the morning.