on my 94 LT1 A4 the tranny started acting up. any help will be appreciated.
tranny was fine last week but this week it seems like it just wont go into its last gear. gears 1-2-3 shift okay but it gets stuck on 3-4. reverse also works fine. what can this be? im new when it comes to tranny issues. the car has 160k miles with all the bolt ons and a cc305 cam, i have no idea how much hps i have.

btw yesterday that i had to drive it work it shifted fine for a few miles but then started doing the same.

do you all think i need a rebuild or what should i do.
any help will be useful
thanks
michael

 

Haven't heard that one too often...

Maybe one of the tranny guru's will jump in to help, but I have a few questions?

Are you sure you are not getting 4th or could it be the converter not locking up? What MPH/RPM are you at when this is happening? You could test if it's the converter when you are experiancing this problem, give it a little gas and downshift to 3rd manually and compare the RPM's the motor is turning if it jumps up then you know that you were in 4th but just with the converter unlocked...

A lot of people feel the converter lock and think of it as a gear change this is the only reason I bring it up...

 

im curious too my 4l60e has a similar problem while at wot (sometimes) tranny shifts fine 1-2 but 3-4 it bounces off the rev limiter and will not shift until i let go of the gas

 

it wont go past 50mph and at that point the rpm is way up there. i never thought about the converter locking up. how could i check if that is the issue.
thanks and please keep them coming
michael

 

couple of things to quick check,

tranny fluid, find flat ground heat everything up and check it, overfilled is better than underfilled but be within a half quart or so. and underfilled is what usually causes top gear to go, if you leak some more you'll lose third 2nd and then first.

run through the gears manually, stop pull all the way into first, rev to maybe 3000 rpm or so, and shift one gear at a time all the way up into overdrive, making sure you feel the shifts into each gear and see the rpm drop, if it shifts 3 times just fine then your OD is fine, if when you hold a cruise rpm in OD and your converter is still slipping it's not locking up

check the shift signals, i dk if that transmission is a vacuum modulated one or an electric one, but vacuum modulators cause funny shifting crap and an electrical circuit going haywire might do the same

change tranny fluid, just cuz it might be worn out or something and you may also find some tell tale pieces of metal in the tranny pan

change valve body gaskets, in my th350c i blew a gasket in the valve body, it happened to blow right in the 2-3 accumulator, so the transmission never built enough fluid pressure to throw the 2-3 shift

lastly I'd take it to a tranny shop, bacause you probably burnt your OD up, on autos the most used gear usually burns up first and the high gears are usually most used, on OD trannys i dont know of anyone personally who's burnt up a gear before OD