Hi

I have booked my car in to get the tranny looked at tomorrow and I need some kind of urgent advice.

When down shifting, say if I slow down to go through a give way sign, the gear box feels like it kind of gets stuck in 3rd and will all of a sudden clunk down to second.
I remember reading on here a while back that this problem typically related to a certain down shift solenoid. Does anyone happen to know what solenoid this is and about how much it should cost to get replaced?

When booking the car in the guy acted as though he doesn't usually have any come in with a downshift problem, which I thought to be a little strange, when I brought up about the solanoid he only said there was one and it was only for up shifting. Which made me think wtf am I doing booking my car into this guy.(he is the only auto tran guy in this small town basically)

Anyway the 2 things he wants to do is a simple service and check of the throttle sensor?????? He said the throttle sensor can screw up causing the car to put it in the wrong gear. Sounds like a load of s**t to me. It's clunky down you fooooooooool!

Now I don't want to waste money getting it serviced only to have to take it back a day later and drain all that oil again.

What are the diff solanoids and what does each do? Any help would be muchly appreciated! Sorry for the long poorly written post.

Sorry this was meant to be posted in the Suspension, Brake & Driveline Workshop. If someone could please move it for me

Yeah he could be right. The throtle sensor does tell it what gear to be in and it does control down as well as up.

But if that was the case wouldn't it play up on all gear shifts?

why downshift an auto through a giveway sign :\

Well you slow down to look for cars, (to say 20) you put your foot back on the accelerator and it clunks down to second....

I assume you were being sarcastic though

you would think so but not necessarily. Just dont go in there with a closed mind thinking it can only be 1 problem. Thats all I am saying. Good luck with it.

I doubt it will be the Throttle Position Sensor, as this only tells the ECU when to change the gear not how. It will be a solenoid, sorry can't tell you which one, if the problem was going up from 1st to 2nd then it would definately be the S5 solenoid.

It very well can be the TPS.

Its not the only thing that tells ECU when to change the gear. Road speed and engine RPM have more to do with that. The ECU does read the rate of change of TPS value to determine what gear to shift to, and if the value is steady when to shift into a higher gear.

A member on here had similar clunking problems when slowing down and accelerating again. Thought it was the trans, but in this case it wasnt.

I found that the TPS was intermittantly getting stuck on a part throttle mode. And the ECU regulates the shift speed and pressure dependant where throttle is. So if the TPS is locked in the wrong spot, it will cause the trans to play up.

And pulling the codes will not identify this as a fault.

Even if its not the TPS, well done to the guy you took it to. At least he was good enough to acknowlegde that the TPS (or an electrical fault in general) may be at fault before instantly saying S5 or trans rebuild. He could be saving you thousands of $$$.

I must take back my earlier statements of foolishness. They did a full flush of the trans and so far the tranny is feeling very nice again:) Cost me $350 though

Anyway it turns out I was the fool in thinking the guy didn't know what he was talking about. I should leave it to the experts I think in the future heh.

Save up your bickys and get a T5

or buy a whole donor car for less than a t5 conversion

350 for a full flush, eek!