Hi All, I've been experiencing a few issues with the auto in my car over the past couple of weeks. When I accelerate enough to make the auto shift down to second gear, the auto shifts out of the gear it is in and the revs seem to increase somewhat, and then it sort of jolts into gear at a lower rpm and continues accelerating as per normal. I was in 3rd gear this afternoon doing about 80 km/h and I had to overtake someone, the auto shifted, but the revs increased to 4000rpm, and then dropped back to 3500rpm. This doesn't happen every time I make the auto downshift. Going from overdrive to 3rd is usually fine, but it seems most prevalent going from overdrive to 2nd, or 3rd to 2nd gear. The parent's car had the same problem, altho the trans was doing it every time you downshifted to 2nd gear, and we had the downshift solenoid replaced, at 50,000kms. Could it be the same thing beginning to fail in my car? Car has done 175,000kms, and the auto fluid and strainer was changed at 160,000kms. Any advice appreciated Harvs82
I'm just leaving the stick in D, what happens is that when I accelerate enough to make the auto shift back to 2nd gear, the revs flare up during the change, and then it goes into gear.
My VS with similar mileage also seems to hesitate and 'flare' more before changing down a gear just as you describe. What I'm going to try is whether the auto will downshift rapidly or with hesitation when I manually downshift (under the same circumstances). I suspect this is to do with 'old age' of our transmissions and hopefully it is not terminal. I'm not sure about solenoids - can they get sluggish in operation or do they electrically fail (like not work). My oil is still red so in theory that means nothing is overheating.
Im unsure if this is related to what my car used to do but mine would flare and then when it dropped back it was a jolt to go back into second. I got the s**ts with it and got the downshift solenoid replaced which fixed it right up. And mine had also done bout that many Kms aswell. Good luck
Maybe the solenoids get a bit sticky and slow in reacting - normally you'd expect them to move instantly but I suppose that like everything else they wear. I'll keep an eye on it and thanks for the tip.
Yeah it looks like it is a faulty 3-2 downshift solenoid... from what I can gather it is a very common problem. It is becoming quite frustrating, so I will be booking it in very shortly to get fixed. Price from GMH is $125 for the new solenoid itself, plus labour, and new fluid and pan gasket.
Just did a search for 4L60E problems and this site came up which relates to most of the problems on this page and has lots of interesting stuff: http://forums.s-series.org/viewtopic.php?t=30786&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Just an update on the situation guys.... Finally got around to booking the car in, and had it looked at this week. As I thought, it turned out to be a faulty 3-2 solenoid, so that was replaced, along with new fluid and new pan gasket. $200 later I was out the door, and all is well. The shift is a lot better than before, I had almost forgotten how it felt with the normal shift...
