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Why is my truck slamming into gear and then dying
dodgeram2002
Member Posts: 2
Hello I have a 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 3.7 v6 2wd single cab my papaw bought it back in 2012 off a guy down the road said it was making a noise from under the hood bought it for 500 buck brought it home and was gonna make it a project for me and him but when we popped the hood we realized he had the belt on wrong we put a new belt on it and my papaw drove it to work from then until November of 2016 he doesn't work for but when we got it it had 160 something thousand miles on it we still made it a project by putting a tune up on new wheels and tires and a paint job and 2 1/2" leveling kit on the front put flow masters smoked head lights and tail lights on it push bar halo head lights light bar custom back bumper well I done most of that since last year cause the day I turned 16 in walked in my room and threw me the keys and said it's yours but anyways instead of talking about how good she looks let's talk about how bad she runs now lol well she has about 210xxxx miles on it now and it been taken care of oil changes all of that the only problems I ever had was fuel pump and water pump and radiator hose go out that's it it started right around the beginning of summer the truck started slipping going up hills and pulling out I checked the tranny fluid it was good and I figured I might of been raising a little to much hell so I took it easy with her then about the middle of summer i would get in it start it up let it run for about 3 or 4 minutes before I went to work in the morning and I would put it in drive and the truck would jump and slam real hard and die and sometimes it would do it sometimes it wouldn't sometimes it would do it once and sometimes It would do it 10 times before I could get it to stay in gear so I put it in the transmission shop and the put it on a reader and it had it for like 2 or 3 days and never called me so I decided to call him and see what was going on if he had figured anything about it cause it's my daily i didn't have another vehicle at the time and I needed to get to work and football practice so he told me that it's been on the lift all those days and he can't get anything to show up he said imma try it one more time in a minute and if it don't do it then come get it I said okay about 30 minutes later he called me back and said it threw off a code for some sensor I can't remember what it was now and he said that it's not to expensive to fix it but it would be if he done it cause it's inside the tranny he said if it was him he would drive it until it don't drive anymore he said he couldn't guarantee me a time he said it could a day or 5 months for all he knows so I drove it until it went out I was on my way to work I backed it up to go down my drive way and it wouldn't go in gear I tried 20 times and it just wouldn't so it set for a while so I drove my other truck my f-350 7.3 powerstroke and gas prices are going up like crazy and it's got bad tires and I've already had two blow outs on it so I need my baby back and plus the powerstroke is lifted I think 5" and I just had acl surgery and can barely walk with crutches so it's hard getting in it but I ended up taking that tranny out going to pull a part and taking my chances on a 80 dollar tranny and ended up pulling the wrong one took it back got another one and put it in and when I pull out it's geared really high and don't feel like it's shifting and it doesn't have passing gear and it was doing all that and what the old one was doing but over fall break I went fishing and used that truck and it drove like the day we got tranny shifted smooth passing gear worked it was like there wasn't a thing wrong with it and it also used to slam into reverse but wouldn't die idk some please help i miss my truck I'm sure y'all can understand thank y'all and god bless and my truck has the 45rfe transmission in it
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Answers
Without those, that is extremely hard to read.
Not trying to be a jerk, but when I first looked at that jumbled up paragraph, my first thought was, "Nope, not even gonna attempt to read that.
If...........I understand your problem, the transmission isn't shifting right and passing gear doesn't work.
Your problem might not be the transmission at all, it could be an engine problem causing the odd shifting and since you said the passing gear isn't working, that is something that would be affected.
Without trouble codes, anything is a guess.
You need to pull the trouble codes and let us know what you get.
Then we can at least make some guess as to what the problem is.
It could be a speed sensor, engine sensor (crank or cam sensor) or a host of other things.
Is the ABS light on? Is the check engine light on?
If the transmission cooler in the radiator becomes restricted, the resulting pressure can falsely command the torque convertor clutch (TCC) to engage, and that can give you the slamming into gear that stalls the engine. If you have ever driven a standard transmission and forgot to step on the clutch when stopping or messed up trying to pull out from a stop and stalled the engine, a that is just about what a false TCC activation would feel like.
Now the tough part is your description and this potential answer do not equal a diagnosis. Your description is sufficient to provide a direction for testing, but knowing that a restricted cooler can act that way needs to be set aside during testing to prove what is wrong. Now sure you can roll the dice and throw an external tranny cooler at this, eliminating the original one and it might even fix some of if not all of the problem.
Your check engine light is on............
Well, you have to fix the known problems before you can fix the unknown problems and more than likely the cause of the check engine light is contributing to the transmission problem.