Posted: March-16-2012 at 7:12am | IP Logged	Tweet

Maybe one of you can explain this...by the grace of God, everything was okay in the end.

Wednesday afternoon, I came around the loop on an interstate exit on-ramp and began to accelerate up to speed (2003 Saturn Vue V-6, sealed transmission) when something felt like it "broke" underneath about mid-vehicle. After pulling to the shoulder, I discovered that all I had was Reverse and Overdrive. Reverse appeared to have normal torque. Anyway, resigned to the fact I was going to have to replace the transmission, I put it in Drive, and drove it home in Overdrive.

My local repair shop is withing walking distance, so I walked there & began inquiring about trannys, which for this ride are hard to find up here. I decided I would wrap up my day and get ahead of the whole thing. This is where it all changed...

...I decided to get back in my car and run 2 errands that were just outside of walking distance. after backing out, I decided to shift the automatic transmission manually to see if I would get a response, and I was shocked to feel it suddenly shifting normally!

I put it in Drive and haven't looked back since. Although I give God the credit here, is there an explanation as to why it did what it did? It obviously wasn't broken...maybe the computer got confused & reset after shutting down & restarting?

Lucky & grateful...that be me

Posted: March-16-2012 at 7:36am | IP Logged	Tweet

   I don't want to rain on your parade,  but it happened once, it'll likely happen again.

  It is computer controlled,  so that's probably the problem,  or one of the connections.  It might have set a fault code,  and you can get that checked.

  A lot less expense than a transmission,  and installing it at least.

Posted: March-16-2012 at 7:41am | IP Logged	Tweet

Yup...happening again definitely is in the back of my head my friend. One mechanic explained that the computer might have gotten confused and tried to shift into 2 gears, or that a shaving might have clogged the tiny opening in the valve? solenoid? Anyway, I know nothing about transmissions (as you can tell, lol).

i have never been this lucky with a vehicle with regards to such a major issue.

Posted: March-18-2012 at 10:31am | IP Logged	Tweet

One thing I've noticed:

I didn't purchase new, but a family member did so I've been familiar with it since purchase. I didn't drive it however until it had 15-20k miles on it. I never thought the transmission behaved quite like it was supposed to. Every time I would accelerate while in motion, it always wanted to kick into "the gear" most accociated with acceleration at much greater speeds. It didn't matter whether I wanted to go just a few MPH faster or 30 MPH.

Now after what happened, it seems to be behaving "normally". There seems to now be an intermediate gear that I can barely feel when going up a hill that propels the ride when I need to maintain speed up a hill when I accelerate just a smidgen, & I have watched it automically downshift itself when slowing. I'm hoping that's good lol.

It also would "wind up" at times when accelerating & shifting at full power (like getting up to speed on an interstate)...it would act like a weak clutch, accelerating to greater RPM's than its torque. It doesn't do that...yet