Hi,
This newsgroup gave me the answer to my problem (thru groups.google.com), and so "to help the next guy", I'm posting a summary of what happened and how I fixed it.
The car is a 1999 Plymouth Breeze with 39000 miles on it. (Yeah, it's an old lady's car). :-)
The symptoms:
- The "check engine light came on".
- The transmission would "clunk on downshifting when stopping", and would not shift up out of 2'nd gear. Known as "limp mode".
I bought a code scanner( Equus Innova 3100 ) and it pulled the codes: Listed in the scrolling order:
P0733 Gear 3 Incorrect Ratio P0715 Input/Turbine Speed Sensor Circuit Malfunction P0700 (Pending) Transmission Control System Malfunction
So after going to
The general advice is:
- a high percentage of the transmission problems is either the output speed sensor or the input speed sensor on the transmission.
- if the odometer is working fine, it's the input sensor (since the output sensor feeds the odometer ).
So I installed the $30 input sensor and things are working fine.
The old sensor seemed to have a bit of corrosion on 1 of it's connector pins. I wonder if it's location predisposes it to some sort of "bi-metallic contact corrosion". It's contacts appeared to be a white metal, whereas the connector has copper.
Anyways, I've tried to include as many "appropriate search keywords" in this post as I could, to help future backyard mechanics.
Thanks again.