1996 Camry - V6 - Auto Trans - 100K miles

For the most part this car has been well maintained and serviced, but today my car started having significant problems, and I think its the transmission.

When I start to drive the engine seems to shake/rattle, unless I accelerate VERY slowly. And when it gets real bad, I need to turn off the car, and start over, and that seems to work. After passing that first gear, it does seem to be OK, just whenever I need to stop.

Very recently the transmission fluid was completly flushed (or so they claim). Today I took my car to a friends shop, and he hooked up the computer and it give him an error about the solenoid (which seems right, given what I searched on this board). He also looked at the transmission fluid and said it was dirty.

Any ideas/thoughts on this? I'm on a very tight budget. How likely is it that the problem is this transmission solenoid? How expensive is this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

While the rest of car may have been well serviced,..it doesn't neceassarily mean the transmission has been serviced as required and or that it hasn't been abused.

If it was the engine and/or its management, this problem would manifest in all gears,...so once again it sounds like the trans is playing up.

Dirty fluid is not generally a good sign,..tho in some cases the trans will go for many miles yet. The dirt you can see in the transmision oil (or fluid) is actually clutch and band material which has worn off and become suspended in the oil. If the amount of clutch material is high, then it can clog the internal filter and cause transmission malfunctions.

The solenoids (or electro-magnetic actuators) are a relatively modern innovation in automatic gearboxes which replace in part some of the hydraulic pistons and valve functions. Its worth investigating the solenoid fault IMO as long as the rest of the trans is worth it.

That decision needs to be made by a competant mechanic. For the price of a change of automatic oil (specific to that transmission) and filter clean,..its worth it to eliminate dirty oil as the cause.

Jason