Thread: Transmission problem Update: post rebuild issues

Thanks for the heads up.

Ugh.... I've been driving the Monte Carlo for the last month while the Intrigue is a work in progress and think I've got a problem again. To give you some more details, when I got the car back, everything was fine and I drove it from the shop to my house (about 4 miles), then drove it to and from work for a few days before taking it out for a highway drive. During that drive the transmission was acting horribly, so I limped it home only to find that the dipstick was dry. Called the shop, they sent a mechanic over and we quickly figured out that their software called for 3 fewer quarts of fluid less than my factory service manual said it needed. The guy topped off the fluid and everything was fine and well until this week...

Now when the car is cold, the 1-2 shift is nice and crisp. My Aeroforce tells me that the shift time is around 200 ms. Unfortunately, as the car warms up, the 1-2 shift gets progressively longer and sloppier under the same throttle conditions. By the time I made it to work this morning the Aeroforce was reading upwards of 500 ms for the 1-2 shift.

The 2-3 shift takes between 400 and 500 ms, which is long enough for me to notice it hanging while accelerating under pretty much any throttle conditions (this has been going on for the last week or two and it's why I started monitoring the shift times). The only shift that is working properly appears to be the 3-4 shift. I haven't noticed any issues with the downshifts like I had been seeing before my rebuild.

I'm thinking there may have been some damage done when the car was down 3 quarts of trans fluid for the first 50 miles after the rebuild, but I really can't say for sure. All I know is the shift quality has decreased dramatically since the rebuild was done. I'm going to be taking it in sometime in the near future, but wanted to know if anyone thinks this sounds like a PCS problem again. The more I have to tell the mechanic when I show up, the more likely he is to be able to fix it.

Sounds like a dumbass to me for not knowing how to check the trans fluid level properly anyways.

Thanks for that useful post, but I checked the fluid level after driving the car the 4 miles from the shop and everything checked out until I took it out for a longer drive. I'm assuming the shop didn't do more than a cursory test drive after putting it back together (pretty much the usual according to my buddy that works at a Ford dealer) and figured the fluid level was good, just as I did until things started acting wonky.

In May, I finally got the shop to tear into the transmission because it was dropping in and out of 4th gear on the highway. Turns out the torque converter was shot, the valve body was shot and the 4th clutch they supposedly replaced was most of the way stripped. I had them rebuild it (under their warranty since I had been *****ing about it since the day I got it back) and sold the car shortly thereafter. Moral of the story, TEP is the only person that should be rebuilding your transmission. Had I gone that route, I'd still be driving my Monte Carlo...