- Oct 9, 2002
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The obligatory disclaimer: I don't know much at all about cars...blah, blah...
Anyway, my automatic-transmission 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera was driving along ~55MPH just fine and then I pulled up to a stop sign as the road bent slightly left. There was no on-coming traffic, so I tried to go forward immediately after bringing the car to a complete stop...and it wouldn't go forward! The car behaves as if it's in neutral except when it's in reverse. I tried all positions: [D], D, 2, 1...then engine just revs up as if I left it in neutral. I had to do some fancy reverse-driving to get into the gas station and call a tow truck.
There was plenty of transmission fluid. The car had made absolutely no strange noises and exhibited no irregular shifting. Do transmissions die silently?
I remembered my mother's Oldsmobile when I was a child...it had developed the opposite problem: It could only go forward and not reverse. She sold it to another fellow in the neighborhood who said that some "pan" somewhere was "grunge-y" and all he had to do was rev it up real fast to clear it out. My mother had sold the car to him for less than the cost of the new tires she just had installed!
It blew my mind when the gas station attendant, a friendly old man, told me that he had an Oldsmobile that began acting up the same way as mine and the transmission was not the problem. Rather, it was a cheap little "gadget" that connects to the transmission.
AAMCO says that it's going to cost more than $1,500.00 just to find out what the problem is! Am I being "taken for a ride" here?
Anyway, my automatic-transmission 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera was driving along ~55MPH just fine and then I pulled up to a stop sign as the road bent slightly left. There was no on-coming traffic, so I tried to go forward immediately after bringing the car to a complete stop...and it wouldn't go forward! The car behaves as if it's in neutral except when it's in reverse. I tried all positions: [D], D, 2, 1...then engine just revs up as if I left it in neutral. I had to do some fancy reverse-driving to get into the gas station and call a tow truck.
There was plenty of transmission fluid. The car had made absolutely no strange noises and exhibited no irregular shifting. Do transmissions die silently?
I remembered my mother's Oldsmobile when I was a child...it had developed the opposite problem: It could only go forward and not reverse. She sold it to another fellow in the neighborhood who said that some "pan" somewhere was "grunge-y" and all he had to do was rev it up real fast to clear it out. My mother had sold the car to him for less than the cost of the new tires she just had installed!
It blew my mind when the gas station attendant, a friendly old man, told me that he had an Oldsmobile that began acting up the same way as mine and the transmission was not the problem. Rather, it was a cheap little "gadget" that connects to the transmission.
AAMCO says that it's going to cost more than $1,500.00 just to find out what the problem is! Am I being "taken for a ride" here?
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