Hello, a friend of our family has an '01 S-type 3.0 with the 5R55N trans. The car has 162K on it, but runs & looks good yet- except for the tranny now. The other night she drove to a restaurant, ate & came out to leave. The trans would not go either forward or reverse. She's had the problem with parking on a hill a couple of times & the cable needs some work now to operate properly (will do that soon), but that wasn't the case this time. It will shift out of park & you can roll the car, but it won't go into gear. I dropped the pan & don't see anything broke with the shift linkage or valve body & there are no unusual particles in the pan. I've searched the forum & didn't really find an answer. Would anyone have a suggestion as to what may be wrong? Thank you.

 

All the (autobox) springs are good? Various are known to fail (eventually).

You may find jag diagnostics would help as I believe they can watch the gear shifter moving, then see what the gearbox's take is on the requested gear, as well as watching each solenoid's activity and so on. Even my AutoEnginuity will do quite a bit of that.

 

Thanks for the info. I assume you mean the valve body springs??? I'm not much of a trans guy, but I may just take the VB apart to find out. If that doesn't reveal anything it may have to go to a trans shop. Any other suggestions are still welcomed. Thanks.

 

Was the fluid level OK?
Did you move the shifter all the way to 2nd?

 

Yes to both of them. We found a broken spring in the valve body for the converter regulator valve. I don't know if that is the culprit or not, but it's a start I guess.

 

Sorry, I was incorrect. It's the spring for the solenoid regulator valve.