Transmission Woes

[Zibi]

I'll start by saying that it's pretty late and I haven't really had a chance to fully explore this problem yet in daylight...

 

So the back story is I went downtown tonight. My truck was driving fine on the way down, I left it parked for 3 or 4 hours, and when I went back to drive home the transmission started acting weird. It feels very sluggish, I don't get any real power until about 2500 RPM and it sounds and feels like something is slipping up to that point. The transmission will not shift into overdrive, driving on the freeway home I was doing about 80-90km/h and it was running at around 3500-4000 rpm when it would normally shift into overdrive. It also won't downshift when you drop the pedal, generally leaving a light if I want to floor it it'll rev way up and I'll get tons of power, now it just revs up around 3000rpm while I gradually gain momentum.

 

Reverse does still work, though the shift was a bit rough. The shift from 1st to 2nd has been a bit hard when it's cold since I bought it in November 2007, but not enough to cause any type of serious concern.

 

The truck does rev through to redline in neutral so I'm sure it's transmission related. It has about 230,000KM on the transmission and there has been no work on it to my knowledge. I have it's entire service history and I'll look through that tomorrow to double check.

 

 

I'm a bit confused because there was no event to my knowledge which triggered it; it worked perfectly fine when I parked it, and I am fairly certain nobody tampered with it while it was parked because everything else is fine.

 

Any advice would be appreciated before I talk to a family friend who happens to be a local nissan service manager on Monday. I'd like to be informed before I get shafted on potentially unnecessary repair bills.

[nismothunder]

It could be that there just not anuff fluid in it,cloded filter,water in the fluid or it could be a converter,its pretty hard to tell with auto trannys but I've seen a car that acted like that with almost no fluid in it.

 

Hope this helps.

[bobber]

To me it sounds like an electrical issue. If the TPS is out of adjustment it could cause all sorts of problems like delayed shift, hard shift. Also if the pressure regulator is messing around it could cause hard engagements and hard shifts. If it started all of a sudden it could be something like this. With my experience things like this probably have a simple solution. Good luck with it.

[Zibi]

Thanks guys, I'm leaning towards electrical too.

 

This morning when I started it to go to work the OD light flashed for about 10 seconds and then went off, and it's been perfectly fine all day. Almost as though nothing ever happened.

 

Fluid level is fine, fluid colour is fine, not sure about the filter as I didn't do the last fluid change on the transmission which was about 9 months ago. I did notice a bit of fluid on the ground when I pulled out this morning which would be a new symptom as my truck has never really leaked anything before.

[Zibi]

All the problems I described above were because the transmission was in limp mode and running only in 3rd gear. I talked to my brother (who used to be a nissan service rep) and looked it up in the nissan repair manual and it pretty much describes word for word what my problem was.

 

I still have absolutely no clue what caused it to go into limp mode though, but I'd guess it would have something to do with the trans oil slowly leaking and the slight burnt smell of the trans oil.

[adamzan]

It can also go into limp mode if you were spinning the tires excessively, but judging from where you were, unless you were doing peelouts, that didn't cause it. If the fluid smells burnt change it as soon as possible so things don't start getting cooked. Mine was brown when I got mine and it took 2 flushes to get it back to normal