Hello All, My sister has a 2003 Intrepid ES with just over 45k miles on it. It has the larger v6 engine and auto transmission. The car runs great, the V6 has a lot of power and torque. The transmission seems to have a weird / randomly occurring issue. When starting up from a stop the trans will sometimes not make it into gear? If you shift the car manually into 2nd or 3rd it goes just fine. Shift it into Drive and you can drive around just happily. It may not do it again for a week, it may do it at the next light. Fluid levels are good and have a nice bright red coloring. She brought it to her local Dodge dealer. They flushed the trans fluid. The dealer did NOT change the trans filter because they claim 'you don't need to change the transmission filter'.
Nothing has made a difference so far. Is the filter getting clogged or is the hydraulic pump going out?
Please let me know as I want some ideas before submitting to the gouging of a transmission shoppe.
Thanks, Carl N.