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Hello all,
Search didn't turn anything up so I'm starting a fresh query. I also read through the manual recently posted by Bill Davies (thanks, Bill!) and found nothing describing my situation.
98 CSE, 170k miles, auto transmission. I do not drive aggressively.
Over the past couple of months, I'll be going along at 65 and suddenly tranny will kick down to 3rd -- this is with no accelerator pedal input, and even happens in cruise control on flat terrain. A couple of weeks ago, during what should have been a 3-hour trip on interstates, ten minutes into the drive I lost 4th, then shortly afterward, lost *3rd*, and had to drive the whole way in 2nd at 4000 revs just to keep enough minimum speed to stay on the highway.
This behavior happens randomly, not consistently. Trans shifts very smoothly, no clunking or roughness.
Once when I lost 4th I stopped for 5 minutes, shut off the car, and when I restarted, no troubles. Another time when I had dropped to 3rd it seemed that fiddling with the cruise control on-off switch restored top gear, but that could have been a coincidence.
Suspecting something electronic, I took the car to my indie. At first he couldn;t find anything amiss. When it happened again, he cleaned all contacts of computer which had some appearance of oxidation on them. Still happened. The other day we replaced governor seals (even though that should supposedly fix a problem in the *other* direction) and when he exposed the screen on the trans, he found "a large washer" up against the screen. (I didnt see the washer so can't describe its diameter, or whether it was intact or broken.) Obviously this washer must have molted out of some part of the transmission. My indie's hope is that the washer was cutting down on ATF flow and we can cross fingers that this will fix the problem. But I am suspicious that it is something else.
A couple of years ago, when the car had 120k I had a similar experience, but at that time the ATF cooler under the radiator had failed, causing intermingling of ATF and coolant, so at the time we attributed to the loss of top gear to that. I replaced the cooler, put in new fluid, and for the past 50k miles have had zero problems. Have also replace the fluid a couple of times since that incident two years ago.
Any theories on why I would lose top gear, and sometimes top *two* gears? Or source of "large washer"?
Finally, if I still have this problem, what's are differences/risks of trying to find a good used ZF vs. buying a rebuilt one? I love this car and would like to keep driving it if I can do so with confidence. Tough, though, when I am using it for longer trips than just local.
Many thanks,
Bruce
posted by 66.220.2...
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