Hello, I'm wondering if anyone has come across this before. I have a 2002 3.0 X type with an automatic transmission and it runs and drives fine unless you manually downshift above around 30 MPH. I never noticed this before but when a relative drove the car and down shifts, the transmission failure light comes on, cruse control unavailable, red light on and sometimes check engine light. If I shut off the car for about a minute it is back to normal. This was originally his car and he said it has done it before.


I also looked around this site and drained and refilled the fluid, and the ECU and TCM is dry with no signs of corrosion or dampness being the problem.


Any thoughts?


Thanks

 

You have your high/reverse clutch piston in the transmission is leaking. Because it's leaking the transmission can not maintain pressure, IE hard shifts. Also, with this it will burn out the third gear clutches, and the transmission eventually fails.
Complete rebuild or replacement is the only thing that can be done.

But, for *****-n-giggles look on the top of your transmission, under the battery box you'll have a serial number. If the serial number is all numeric, I promise you what I explained above is what's going on. If it's numeric and alphabetic, usually one letter at the end, you have a chance that it's not the high/reverse clutch piston that's leaking...

 

Out of curiosity, are there any additives for the fluid that might help cure this?

 

You can try some Seafoam Trans-tune, worked good on my transmission until it died.