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Hi everyone,
This is my first time posting to the board, but I hope you can help.
I am a 16 year old High School student, and my parents bought a 1994 900SE V6 Automatic with 74 thousand miles on it. Since then, I have driven it frequently. A few days ago, I was driving in fairly cold weather (uppr. 20s, low 30s- I'm in Maine, its cold here) and the check gearbox light came on. I immediately pulled over and shut the car off to reset everything. I then continued driving, the car was showed no signs of poor shifting. Then, about 5 minutes later, the light came on while I was driving at about 50-55, It was stuck in 3rd gear (Because the RPM was went up to about 3000), So again, I pulled over and checked over the engine. A hose was laying there loose along side the battery, I figured that was the problem. The car drove fine for the rest of the day after having it off for five minutes. Upon closer inspection by some Saab friends of mine at school, we came to the conclusion that it was a transmission fluid overflow tube so I thought nothing of it. On the drive home from school, which is a 15 minute drive on a 45MPH road with no big inclines, the check gearbox light came on again, and stayed on for the ride home, olny this time the car was stuck in 3rd when I tried to start off. Immediately when I got home, I took my father out for a drive to show him the problem and we continued on to our local Saab Mechanic (Sweedish Solutions in Portland). They spent a good 2 hours on it (Mostly repairing a clogged wiper problem) and told us that since it was such a rare model, a V6 Auto, that he'd have to refer us to the dealer, but before they sent us on our way, they hooked up their diagnostic computer thing-a-ma-jig to the car. They told us that the transmission was reporting "Short Kick-Down periods" and "No RPM Input from engine to the Tranmissino". So on we went to the dealer, Portland Saab, and they gave it a road test (Coming up with the same conclusion) that is was stuck in 3rd. After leaving it for a day, they called us up saying that the transmission was reporting an internal error, they replaced the fluid, but it did not help the problem. They told us that the only way to correct the problem is to replace the tranmission with a refurbished one, which would cost $3,200 (Which is a little more than a third of what we paid for the car!!) So we told them not to change the transmission. The following Day, my dad went into town to pickup the car. They charged us $120 just to change the fluid and to hook up the diagnostic computer to it (Which Sweedish Solutions did free of charge). So my father intentionally drove it easy on the way home. This time, the light didn't come on until 25 minutes into the 30 minute drive. He was going up an incline, and "Goosed" it. This caused the car to want to downshift- instead, the light came on and it stuck into 3rd gear again. Also, manually shifting the car doesn't work! The only connection I can make is that the transmission isn't getting the RPM signal, therefore getting confused of what the engine is doing, and will not downshift when you go up a hill/give it a lot of gas. I have called about 3 Saab mechanics, all of them refuse to diagnose the transmission because they don't know how to basically. From what I've read on the post, the dealer can reset the computer to get the tranmission out of "Limp" mode (keeping the car in 3rd to prevent further damage). The instances similiar to this usually include spinning the wheels and making the RPMs skyrocket. About a week ago, after a snowstorm, I tried getting out of my driveway (With a 2 foot snowband at the end) and the car got stuck for a little while, I manually disengaged TCS and gave it some gas... The car redlined, well- it acutually hit the 6600 RPM piont, where the gas is cut down to keep the engine from getting hurt- which suprised me because I wasn't on the gas very hard, soon after, it crawled out of the snow. Could this have effected the transmission? I don't know too much about transmissions, but once the car reached a certain rpm, even when the wheels are slipping, shouldn't it change into the next gear? I'm not sure, I don't think my caravans (both autos) shifts when its slipping.
Let me know what you think, I don't want to have to shell out $3200 for a new tranmission.
Thanks,
Chris Campbell 1994 900SE V6 Auto
feeny@tmbg.org
(207)-727-5439
, Fri, 26 Jan 2001 21:14:34
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