As I was driving home from work my transmission suddenly slammed. When it did, the engine RPMs went a little bonkers and various warnings came up on the dash.

I was going 35ish mph, not driving hard at all. When I tried to continue driving the drivetrain shuttered (no acceleration at all), but I was able to continue on a bit and pull over to park:





I kept the car running for about 15 min while I waited for the tow truck to arrive. During that time the RPMs never leveled out, the idle was continually bouncing around.

Then we loaded it up and took it to my mech.


Tomorrow morning they will scan it and make a diagnosis. I'm thinking the tranny is going to have to be replaced. I have been experiencing rough shifts from 2nd to 3rd gear every time I first drive off for a while now.

I've already ordered a new IVM (Integrated Power Supply Module) because intermittent no starting issues.

Any bets on if its the tranny and if so how much its gonna cost?

 

when the trans detects an issue, it goes into fail-safe mode. basically it stays in 3rd gear. you should have shut it off and restarted. chances are the trans would work fine again temporarily. but something obviously caused the trans to go into failure mode. need to scan codes. you may just need to change the solenoids on the mechatronics. there is a how-to on here. a hard shifting trans is not such a bad thing. its when the trans slips, that is really bad, cause then the clutche plates are either shot or going to real soon.

 

Thanks for the info. Hopefully I will find out something this morning.

 

Let us know what happens.

 

Got the call from mechanic. Said the codes point to a bad Crankshaft Position Sensor. Going to replace it for $150. Oh manI hope they are right!! $150 is a lot better than say $1,500 for a mechatronics or something

 

Look at all those ominous iDrive messages.

Diagnosis? bad crank position sensor.

Yea, cars are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too complicated these days. Ridiculous.

 

Picked her up today, drives great. It was the crankshaft position sensor that had gone bad. All in all it cost me a total of $230 for diagnoses + parts($85 for new sensor) + labor.

Very happy my transmission is OK and that $230 bill doesn't have another 0 at the end

You guys in Lexington area be sure to check out Import Auto Specialist. They are great mechanics, been working on my cars for over 3 years now.