The subject pretty well describes the problem. My 1996 Grand Voyager with the 3.3L/4 speed drive train began to act up on me today. The van has 175,000 miles on it and I was nearing the end of a long road trip and stopped for gas. The van had been cruising the previous 3 hours at
65 MPH. As I was pulling out of the gas station, the van bucked pretty violently shaking the van smartly. The tach jumped around between 1,000 and probably less than 400 RPM. The van didn't completely stall, but came very close. Once I got some throttle in and got above 15 MPH or so, the van smoothed out.The van ran fine at speed, but when I got near home and had to go through town, it would this at every stoplight, ocassionally stalling. It would restart instantly and idle great in park or neutral, but as soon as I shifted into D or R, it would buck like a bronco until I got it moving a little.
Some time back, I had similar symptoms when my fuel pump was failing, however, there was one major difference and that is that before shifting into neutral didn't help. The service manager at that time thought it might be the torque converter locking up inadvertantly, but he changed his mind once he heard that shifting into neutral didn't help the problem. Since shifting out of gear now does help, is this possibly an indication that this is the torque converter clutch intermittently locking up? Are there other failure modes consistent with these symptoms? Which sensors does the transmission controller use to decide when to engage the clutch?
Matt