Fun times with A4LD

[holyford86]

Been working on a bronco II with an a4ld, we just swapped the original a4ld which only had 1st and second gear for a known good and recently rebuilt unit. We installed the transmission and the truck would not start, something was binding in the bellhousing (so we thought)... We yanked it back out and verified that the torque converter was fully seated on both sets of splines and engaged into the pump and reinstalled, same problem. we backed off the bolts on the bellhousing to the point where they were finger tight and tried again, the truck started and ran ok for a couple of secs until it got drawn down and stalled by the transmission, we put a ratchet on the crank bolt and we were unable to turn the crank at all. the transmission was full of fluid and before it died we were able to shift it through the gears and it did go in. What are we doing wrong here? Our knowledge of automatic transmissions is limited at best and we are unsure of where to go from here, Ideas?