kartorium

Hi all, I've got a problem with the trans in my truck. My roomate said this forum is full of trans gurus so I decided to post here.

Back story: 1997 Chevy 1500 about 200k on trans. Drove into seattle last night to stay at a friends house, the truck drove fine. Woke up this morning to go fuel up and felt a binding/clunk when the truck tried to make it's first shift. I let off the gas and pulled into a parking lot. Checked the fluid, looks a little bit low. After cycling the gears and check several times it's just a tad above the high side of the cold mark.

I place selector in second gear, try to go, feels like the brakes are on and won't move until after about 1500 rpm. And barely moves then. Feels like something's binding. Put it in 1st and it drives fine. Put it in 3rd or OD and it drives fine until it goes to shift. Then it bucks a bit and slows down and goes back to first.

Reverse works fine. Speedo works, and I don't have any check engine lights.

Any ideas what the problem could be? It seems odd that overnight it would go from working to not. It makes me think that it could be electrical.

Thanks a lot for any insight! Basically I need to find out soon if this is something I need to have my rig towed for, or if it's something I can fix here in my friends parking lot.

bigmac108

If you manually put the truck in 2nd, the trans will apply your band and hold it in 2nd even from a stop. That is normal for it to take more rpm to move in 2nd gear. I'm not understanding exaclty what the problem is. I get from what you are saying that the trans downshifts into first everytime? Explain

kartorium

1st gear seems to work fine. So while trouble shooting I selected 2nd gear and found that the vehicle doesn't want to move at all. The force holding the vehicle from moving forward is similar to if you fully applied the brakes and tried to accelerate. Once the rpms get up a bit the vehicle moves slightly, but it is being bound by something and after moving a few inches I let off the gas so that something doesn't break.

When you select OD or 3rd the vehicle acts normal until it goes to shift up to second gear. At which point it bucks a bit, falls on it's face and doesn't want to move.

No CE lights, but I'm thinking that there are probably still some codes to read. I recently purchased this vehicle and am not positive if the light even works, so putting a scan tool on it might reveal some problems.

kartorium

So far on both the other forums I've posted to I've just gotten basically "it needs a rebuild." I'm actually hoping that someone knowledgeable could shed a bit more light than that. Some examples of what specifically could cause these symptoms.

Thanks.

pbj-tj

iTrader: (2)

sounds slightly different then my issue. Im checking the solenoids on mine, mines a 2000 though..

kartorium

A guy over on hotrodders had a similar problem and it turned out to be the solenoids. I'm going to investigate this idea instead of replacing the whole damn transmission.

cause4panic

iTrader: (2)

Sunshell

Gilbert@Ace Racing

What is the fluid condition? Is it nice and red or dark and smelly?

g

kartorium

Clean and Red.

I was under the impression I'd be having problems with reverse if the sunshell was broken..... Maybe I was under the wrong impression?