2001 SL only goes in 1st and 2nd gear
I couldn't find any other threads that addressed my problem, so here goes:
I was on my way to the store earlier today. Started the car, put in reverse, backed out, no problem---just like anyother day. Put in first gear then started rolling. As I neared the RPM to shift to second, the gearbox was wobbly (which was strange), put it into second, then I had to downshift. It felt wierd. I pulled over. Car only goes into 1st and 2nd gear, I have no neutral and can't get into the other gears.
Some nice guy came up to me to see what the problem was. He told me it might be my clutch cable. He was nice enough to stop traffic for me so I could flip a u-turn in 1st gear to head back home.
So I'm home now, clutch can go into 1st or 2nd. Clutch feels normal, gearbox (where shifter is) is loose. Can anyone one please shed some light on my problem? I have a 2001 Saturn SL, I just hit 200,000 miles. I love this car. Runs great until today, just cant get into other gears or reverse.
Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
I was on my way to the store earlier today. Started the car, put in reverse, backed out, no problem---just like anyother day. Put in first gear then started rolling. As I neared the RPM to shift to second, the gearbox was wobbly (which was strange), put it into second, then I had to downshift. It felt wierd. I pulled over. Car only goes into 1st and 2nd gear, I have no neutral and can't get into the other gears.
Some nice guy came up to me to see what the problem was. He told me it might be my clutch cable. He was nice enough to stop traffic for me so I could flip a u-turn in 1st gear to head back home.
So I'm home now, clutch can go into 1st or 2nd. Clutch feels normal, gearbox (where shifter is) is loose. Can anyone one please shed some light on my problem? I have a 2001 Saturn SL, I just hit 200,000 miles. I love this car. Runs great until today, just cant get into other gears or reverse.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
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Let me know how it works out for you.
I'll have to make a decision soon on what to do. But I do thank you for your suggestions. Have a Blessed day.
I am going to order that slave/master cylinder assembly from RockAuto. I was going to get it from Autozone as they have one in stock at their Allentown, Pa. store which is about 20 miles from me. But the price with tax will be about $102, and my Mrs. tells me we have to be careful what we spend. I'm thinking about ordering the first one that comes up on the Rockauto page, can't remember the brand name now, but even with shipping the price is slightly over $80, although I'll probably have to wait a week for it. I'd sure be pleased to take advantage of your 5% discount code as ANY help would be greatly appreciated. I'm going on the site now, but I'll wait for your response before I actually order it. I can supply you with my e-mail addy if that's better for you. Thanks so much!
I went onto Rockauto.com and the brand name of the part I need is Rhinopac/World Auto. Hope this is a good brand, guess I'll see. I wait for your discount info before I order. Will I have to register with Rockauto to take advantage of the discount? I hope to have the part sometime next week, I think they're out of the midwest somewhere. Anyway, thanks again and have a wonderful weekend.
I got the clutch master/slave cylinder kit from Rockauto last Friday and installed it yesterday(Sunday) It SEEMED like it shifted better at first, but I think I have other issues going on here. Not quite sure what at the moment, but I'm just gonna drive the car and whatever happens, happens. No more $$$ to put into car right now. Got an issue with one of the motor/tranny mounts too, it's either the one down by the crank or the one directly above that attaches to the motor, I can move it with a pry bar. That hydraulic unit change went pretty smoothly, but I did have to loosen the nuts on the brake master cylinder that has the ABS unit on it. Didn't take it all the way out of course, but it helped give me a little more room to get the clutch m/c out.
Thanks again for the tech help and just pray that the car doesn't give me any more headaches for the time being.
Well, I tried to solve this problem as cheaply as I could, but I think it just may be the synchronizer in the tranny now. It's doing the same thing it did before I changed the slave, but only after the trans warms up for whatever reason. The car is fine till it comes up to temp then I have trouble getting it back into 1st. Another curious thing is that when I start the car(after it warms up, though) it feels like something's grabbing or holding inside the motor(or tranny)Not sure how to explain it better and it doesn't do it all the time. I know I have a bad motor or possibly the lower trans mount because you can not only feel the engine shake when it starts like that but you can see it too. Funny thing is when I put my pry bar on these mounts I suspect are bad they don't move too much. The one on top of the motor, passenger side that has 3 nuts or studs on top does move back and forth. I'm thinking it's that one and the one on the bottom pass side right in front of the crank pulley or so. But the real issue is the shifting problem that's not going away soon. Since I'm out of work right now, my choices are rather limited, so should it get steadily worse, I'm just gonna have to park it. The car is 16 years old and ran very well until this started happening. You have to pull the motor and trans out together the way I see it, and I'm not really set up to do that, and it would still cost $$$. Just gonna pray for a Blessing to get around this.
OK, you take care and have a Blessed day!
I told him that if the water pump was OK, then the problem was most likely a stuck thermostat. He said he got one when he got that sending unit(that he didn't need)so when I got the car I drained the coolant, replaced the thermostat AND put back his original sending unit(he still had the old one in the trunk, good thing too!) I came to find out that the guy who put the new sending unit bent the 2 prongs when he plugged it back in and that's why the gauge didn't work. But the key reason the car got hot was the cooling fan's relay in that box under the hood was bad and wasn't kicking in the fan when the gauge got a little more than half way up! I ended up swapping the A/C relay(same thing)and the fan started working and all was well as far as the overheating issue was concerned.
This car has nearly 180K on it and seems to run fine. But a few days after I did what I did, he complained that it was shutting down from time to time. He or his girlfriend would be stopped at a light and the car would shut off. It would start up right away usually, but just yesterday he called me and told me that now it didn't want to restart. Before I got the car to work on, he told me about an incident where the car shut down and wouldn't start and somebody pulled the oil dipstick and there was no oil on the stick. There is a low oil pressure switch on these cars and it is designed to do exactly do that; shut down before the engine seizes for lack of oil. His girl put of all things straight 30 weight in it(someone told her it would be OK) but she proceeded to overfill the crankcase to the point that the car was smoking badly because of too much oil. The first thing the day I had it here was to drain the oil and fill it with the proper weight and amount. I use the same oil drain pan I've had for over 30 years and there was so much oil in that crankcase that it nearly came overtop my drain pan!
What could be causing the car to shut down on them? Could the low pressure oil switch be faulty? I asked him this yesterday, are you low on oil? He said yes, so I told him to put in the PROPER oil and not to OVERFILL it. If the car is that low on oil now, then the car's either burning it or leaking it somewhere. My '96 uses about a half to three quarters of a quart in between changes. Another one his friends, supposedly a mechanic, keeps telling his girlfriend(I think they are related) that the water pump is bad. I checked that when I had the car, no leaks, no movement at the pulley and of course the coolant was being circulated just fine. If I suspected the pump, I would have changed it for him. I did mine last fall and the pump was only $32 bucks. Then this guy tells him it's the crankshaft position sensor shutting the car down. If this were true, wouldn't a check engine code be set? This car had 5 codes stored in it when I checked it before I did my work on it and the only one that mattered was the code 15, the coolant temp sensor. The rest of them were due to that being out of whack. When I was done with what I did, there were NO CODES, all was cleared.
I know, Lou, another long winded note. But I guess he needs this car, so if you can give me a heads-up on why this shuts down like this I'd be happy. Funny thing is a day or two after he picked up the car from me, he asked me at work to ride with him and I'd see how it shut down when coming to a stop. But the car ran great during that 4 or 5 mile trip! I'm not sure what is more strange sometimes, cars or people!! LOL
Thanks again for your knowledge and have a great day!
3/4 or a little past depending on how good the temp gauge and temp coolant gauge is.You said the fan comes on just after half on the gauge.Also the crank sensor can cause those symptoms be bad and never set a code.When it dies and not start see if you have spark?
He was supposed to call me yesterday(Sunday)and we were gonna get together and see if we can get this resolved but I haven't heard from him. If I do I'll suggest changing that other temp sensor and see what that does. It's not expensive, about $12. Then we could go from there. Thanks for the heads up on the crank sensor too. I'll also tell him that there is no low oil pressure shut down switch. He was saying on Saturday that the oil level was low, didn't know where it was going. I didn't see any leaks when I had it, but I do know Saturns do use oil, mine does. Remember his car has nearly 180K on it, but when I had it here, a friend of mine stopped by and we took compression readings from each cylinder and all were really good, 170PSI or above while cranking for 5 or 6 seconds. I'll give him a call and see what he wants to do. Thanks again, Pal!
I talked to my friend this morning as he was leaving for school(he's going to Barber school) and he says that his girlfriend's uncle has the car now. I'm not sure what this guy knows or doesn't know but from what he told me it seems to add more to the problems than to solve them, know what I mean? He tells me that this guy says that the battery wires are wrong, of all things! Now if that were true, the thing would never start at all, right? This is what I mean by second hand info, this uncle tells his niece, then the story changes by the time she tells my friend, so who knows? I explained to him what you said about the sending unit for the cooling fan and PCM just as I told him a while ago and I had the same issue with mine 4 years ago. But now he has to wait to see what this other guy says/does and go from there. If I hear anything at all, no matter how rediculous it sounds I'll let you know. Later!!
You ain't gonna believe this, but my shift cable on my 96 SL1 just broke as soon as I pulled into my alley in back of the house! Had to get wife to steer it into driveway while I pushed it. I'm in the process of taking everything off to gain access now. It's the one on the RIGHT side of the shift lever from what I can see at this point, the left one is intact. I'm going out now to remove the console and see just what I have. I think I remember you or someone else a while ago saying you can just replace the broken END of the cable, is that right, not the whole cable? Now I'm wondering if this has been my problem the entire time! Please let me know anything you can on this as soon as you can. Thanks!
Let me know what you think about the above and please advise. And as always, thanks so much and God Bless!
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OK, thanks again for the help and we'll keep in touch. I should give you my Email addy if you want it. Let me know.
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I spent most of this morning just putting back together what this guy took apart, most of it were thing he really shouldn't have bothered with. To make a long story short, I got everything back together and I re-connected my friend's original PCM and put it back in its place. This guy had the fusebox under the hood unbolted and laying on its side. He told my buddy he was looking for a bad wire! I saw no damage and put the thing back to normal. I checked everything and hooked up the battery and the motor turns over nice but won't start. There is NO SPARK at the plugs. I had #1 out and hooked up to another plug and held it to the exhaust manifold and my wife cranked it for me, nothing. That's where I ended the day for now. One thing I noticed when I was cranking was I didn't smell gas in the throttle body.
But the issue is there's no spark. Now I'd be appreciative to know where to look from here. You may remember that I told you that shortly after I worked on it before(and it ran fine when I gave it back to him) that the cooling fan was coming on just by turning the key and I had that happen to my 96 and needed to replace the 2 wire connector to solve that problem, but it always started. My troubleshooting section of my manual says to check the CTS and the Crankshaft position sensor as well as the coil pack. Would a bad CTS OR CPS not make spark at the plugs? I see the test methods and I'll look into doing them sometime later in the week.
What would you suggest I start with first. Another friend of mine did a compression test on this car back in May and we got nearly 180psi out of 3 cylinders and 170 out of the last one. I had the valve cover off today(this guy had THAT loose for God only knows why) and I swear that head is super clean and shiny. I wonder if whoever had it before my friend got it had it replaced or serviced.
Any help you can give me on what to focus on with this car is always greatly appreciated, Lou. This is the last stop for this car, my friend says the next stop is the salvage yard! I may have to get some salvage yard parts as he doesn't have a lot of money to put into it. We have a local U Pull It about 15 miles from me. I'd just like to do what I can to help him one last time with this car. One last question that just came to me: Can I pull off the fuel line where it goes into the rail(I have the disconnect tool) and see if I'm getting fuel? All I have to do is just start cranking, right? I tried to hear if the pump was making noise when I first turned the key to the start position, but I'm not sure if I did or not. Thanks again and have a Blessed day! (Mike)