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Comments
i'm trying to sell mine, but i need to fix it somehow first.
Kenny
But lately I think I'm having transmission issues. There are times when I push the accelerator and it acts like it's in neutral instead of drive--the engine revs, but no acceleration, nothing. The other day I had to pull into a parking lot, put it into Park, then back into Drive. It doesn't happen all that often, though it seems to be happening more frequently.
Is it the transmission? If so, what could be wrong--and most importantly, how much would it cost to get it fixed?
My engine light doesn't even come on either.
You don't state how many miles is on your vehicle, but the transmission filter should be changed every 25,000 miles to ensure good transmission life. Always use Chrysler ATF+3 or ATF+4 in that transmission. Do not substitute another type, especially Dexron-Mercon.
Regards,
Dusty
two things 1)If there is too much transmission fluid, how can it be emptied mine is well above the third hole in the stick when hot indicating too much fluid and my wife just had the fluid changed and now my 97 isn't shifting. 2) How do you change the filter. Is this something that can be done by a novice or should either be left to a professional. I've done quite a bit of engine work but I've never touched a tranmission other to remount one.
Thanks,
Sabastian
So, I am asking all of you transmission experts to give me any tips so that my 2005 Chrysler Town & Country can go for many years without having transmissions problems.
So far the only real tip that I saw was Dusty's a few posts up which said:
"the transmission filter should be changed every 25,000 miles to ensure good transmission life. Always use Chrysler ATF+3 or ATF+4 in that transmission. Do not substitute another type, especially Dexron-Mercon."
That is the type of tip I like.
By the way, can I change the transmission filter myself or should I bring it in for that?
The only type of work that i do on my vehicles is replace the air filter and change the oil and oil filter.
I noticed that it tends to happen more often on a cold engine. In fact, today, when I went to take my son somewhere, before leaving the house I had to put it in park and start it no less than three times to get it going...and just recently the nights here have been much cooler.
On a warm engine I don't seem to have any problems. Someone suggested to me that it could be the linkage.
Fortunately my husband and I make it a point to get a repair manual for whatever vehicle we acquire, so I'm going to look up the section and see if a novice such as I can change the transmission filter...if that's what it needs.
I'll go out there a little later and check the levels. Thanks for the advice.
The van passed 110,000 miles on this trip. I changed the oil in the engine just before the trip using Castrol High milage 10-30 and a treatment of Prolong as an expirienced user of this product. I did not change the tranny fluid not being the wiser and the lack of time. The vehicle sat for this past summer as the previous owner purchased a Durango and waited a while to decide to sell.
Description. I would explain what occured as the computer/vacuum system hit a finite "sour" spot (as opposed to sweet) in which the tranny received a command to downshift one or two gears at which immediately received the command to resume. This resulted in what I would call a torque spike that "jerked" the eng/tranny assembly in it's mounts and resonated through the chassis.
The other option is that it could be that the clutch plates slipped and then gripped again. I would rule this out as the jerk that was experienced would be likened to shifting to neutral, revving the engine, and shifting into drive at the same time you let off the gas and the rpms are JUST leaving redline on the way back down after letting off the gas.
This occurred with the cruise on and without. But consistently on a slight incline, between 55-60 mph either 3 or 4 times within 125 miles traveled.
I'm just an amateur and have worked on all the vehicles I've owned and should own a nicer one than I drive (the T & C is strictly a work car) with all the money I have saved doing my own work. I have removed, rebuilt and replaced the tranny's in my 92 Mazda MPV and 89 Nissan P/U which until I got into it are the same base transmission with different assemblies for mating to different engines and transfer cases (both are 4WD). So dive right into any detailed info freely, use laman's terms and anything that I don't follow I will reply on. I just want to know if this has occured to anyone else and what was found of the situation. Is this something that can be fixed with a module gasket and a module remove-clean-replace and new tranny fluid or should I prepare my bank account. Welcoming any and all comments. Thank you.
He told me there are two sensors, one on the front and one on the back of the transmission.
One.
They can cause the Torque converter to lock up solid. When you pull the lever into gear, the engine dies.
Two.
When you approach a stop sign the transmission wont shift down. It kills the engine before you can shift it down.
Three.
When you are heading up a slight slope at freeway speeds, on cruise control, and the Torque converter should unlock so the engine can maintain the speed, the engine just slows down and the car slows down as well while the transmission stays locked in high gear.
He says those conditions sound like the front sensor, but could be either one.
HOWEVER.....if it's not those sensors, it's inside the transmission. Some Neoprene double flapper type valves.
Not something for the ordinary brain surgeon to be hacking away at.
I'm hoping that's all it was! I still have fluid to spare, too--I didn't use the whole quart.
I'm going to be checking it weekly to make sure there isn't a leak or anything.
Beware
I also had issues of a shudder on acceleration. On one occasion this was due to a bad CV joint. On another occasion, which behaved exactly the same way, it was caused by a bad spark plug wire. It ran fine, but mis-fired under acceleration. Also, the condition of the engine mounts seem to affect shudder..
They used Wynn's flush service. The total was 160 plus tax. Doesn't this seem high?
Also why should it have needed it? We have 42000 miles and the van is 3.5 years old. the only reference in the manual is to do it at 48000 miles if you tow trailers which we don't.
Regarding your early service (Part 1)... IF the transmission fluid did indeed look dark and burnt, then yup, it should have been changed. The thing is that at only 42,000 miles with no obvious heavy duty service, I'd be highly suspicious of whoever told me that. Said another way, I'd want to see the fluid side by side with some new fluid.
Regarding your early service (Part 2)... I just checked the service guide for both our 1998 3.8 GC and our 2003 3.8 GC and noticed a marked difference in what services are called out for the transmissions. For the 1998, a complete flush and filter replacement is recommended every 30,000 miles (for Schedule "A", 15K for Schedule "B"). For the 2003 (which most likely has the same service schedule as your 2002), there are no such transmission flush recommendations.
Best Regards,
Shipo
Hmmm, interesting. Acknowledged that the manual doesn't state that a "Flush" should be done every 30K, however, I did ask them to perform a "Flush" and on my reciept it says, "1 -- PKBGT -- BG Trans Flush -- $22.00". That said, now you've got me wondering, I suppose the indicator is how much trans fluid they used for the refill. Under the assumption that a complete flush (ie. draining the torque converter) would use more fluid than just a pan drop and filter swap, do you have any idea how much fluid should be used for either operation?
Best Regards,
Shipo
At this dealer, who I usually trust and like, they recommend the Wynns flush system. Apparently they drain, put in new fluid with the wynns solvent and flush it to get all of the old fluid and residue out. They then flush again with ATF+4 to displace everything with clean ATF+4. On the bill it showed 12 qts of ATF+4 used, a labor fee and 34 bucks for the wynns solvent / cleaner.
I'll admit that in theory it sounds good but I just thought the 160 was a lot and I wasn't thrilled that they talked my wife into doing it with out me hearing about it first (she had forgot her cell phone). I would have really questioned the need at 42000 miles and the total cost.
This behaviour started occurring after we had to jump start the vehicle that had a flat battery. We took our vehicle back to the dealer, where they replaced the computer module and got the vehicle running again. However, this took 3 plus weeks and nice big bill. After all this the problem started again after 6 months.
I wonder if you have had any information provided by your chrysler dealer.
Another thought we had was to go to a specialist auto electrician, to see if he can work out the problem.
Looking forward to your experiences.
Angelo
Annie
Can anyone help with what is causing the car to want to lunge forward while you are stepping on the brake? I would like to get this fixed because we have three small children riding in the car.
Thanks man.......
Try a google search on "unintended acceleration" and see what ideas/information you find. Roy
Over the last 5 months and nearly 14,000 miles I've filled almost exclusively at ExxonMobil (which around here is more than half of all of the stations) with a few stray tanks of either Shell or Sunoco, and through all of those miles it has been the rare tank indeed that didn't hit between 21.5 and 22.5 mpg. Anyway, after this fill (and associated reset of the trip computer) I noticed that my "Avg MPG" display was hovering in the high 17s and low 18s and that my transmission was very rough when it upshifted. Initially I didn't associate the poor mileage to the cheap gas, and it wasn't until last night that I started wondering if the transmission issue was somehow related as well.
Under typical circumstances (i.e. name brand fuel in the tank), my van would normally execute silky smooth upshifts during my daily commute on some rather hilly roads. Last night however, when I would approach those same hills at my normal speed of about 45, it felt as if I had to give the van more pedal to maintain speed up the incline, and when the upshift came, it was very abrupt and harsh, so harsh I found myself worrying about the health of my tranny (which is nearing 102K miles I might add).
Thinking about it logically, if the transmission computer is monitoring the throttle position as one of its indicators that an upshift is necessary, then I would assume that with this cheap fuel the throttle position where the change-up would be called for would occur effectively at a lower level of power output (but at a similar throttle setting) than when compared to the normal fuel that I run. If the transmission is expecting to effect said gear change while dealing with a certain amount of torque, and said torque is well south of the mark, then the lock-up after the gear change should indeed feel harsh.
Hmmm, thinking about what I just wrote, it would seem rather counter intuitive that a lower power (than what the designers expected) gear change would be at all damaging to the transmission. That being said, the harshness was significant and couldn't possibly mean anything good for the continued health of my tranny.
The good news is that last night as I neared zero once again on the DTE display (and only a total of 18.5 on the Avg MPG display), I found myself right by a Shell station. Wouldn't you know it, I'm now 100 miles into this new tank and my Avg MPG display is sitting on 22.4 and the transmission is once again shifting smooth as silk.
With all of that in mind the following questions are clamoring for an answer:
1) Is there a correlation between cheap fuel and a high incidence of transmission failures?
2) Does all of this even make sense?
3) What can be done/added to Regular gasoline that would cause such a drop in power and mileage? Ethanol?
Anything else that I'm missing?
Best Regards,
Shipo
I really doubt anyone could make a case for poor gas causing transmission failures.
Almost all the gas in our state is 10% ethanol, and I nearly always buy the cheapest I can find (though the brand names seem to match penny for penny with the offbrand/independent stations around here anyways lately), with no noticeably affect on driveability, on our 1996 Caravan.
Just curious, since I've never (knowingly) fueled with a fuel blended with Ethanol and as such have no experience with this fuel type, what kind of mileage are you getting and which engine does your van have?
Best Regards,
Shipo
I believe the 10% ethanol blend has a bit less energy per gallon than other formulations. I can't really buy non-ethanol gas in our area, as the MBTE additive that serves some of the same "oxygenation" function for emission reduction has got a bad name for polluting groundwater, etc. We also get different formulations for winter and summer, and the formulation is different for SE Wisconsin than the rest of the state, and we buy both on a lot of occasions. Too many variables to track mileage vs additive package!
After getting it up in the air, I pinned the sound down to the diff. Here is my question. Can I remove the drive axles with out getting into the diff. As I am doing this on my back I would like to make this as EZ as possible on myself.
Also has anyone had this problem before. And if so what was your fix.
I have some 20 yrs experience as a heavy line mechanic in Ford stores, but very little about FWD's. Thanks in adavance for your help and time, John :sick:
Today (12/23), my son called to tell me the engine is racing. Tranny has always been a bit sloppy with sudden lurches and clunks. Sounds like automatic tranny belt is slipping. We'll see - of course it is on Christmas weekend.
Merry Christmas one and all.
Since yesterday i am seeing that the engine light is ON.
Van has no problem in running. Also recently I have observed that while driving on Hwy the gear shift from 'D' to 'N' few times in couple of months. so what should i do now. Is this could be a sign of tranny going bad or may be bad fuel. I hope my warranty should covers it if something happens to my tranny. I went to the dealer and they were giving me an appointment for next week. Someone says I can go to Autozone to get the code free for engine light is that true.
Help please.