I was on my way to lunch today when my tranny started having some issues. I drove earlier today to AutoZone no problem - everything worked fine. I brought it back home, put it in the garage and then an hour or so later I took it out to drive to lunch.


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I was on my way to lunch at a place about 2mi from my house (thankfully). I get there, turn up a side street to park and there was no parking on the side I was on so I continue up farther to make a uturn. This is where the trouble began.

I started to circle around and I couldn't make it without reversing so I stopped, put it in reverse, the gear engaged, I took my foot off of the brake and it just shuddered and bucked and barely moved. I immediately threw it in park and thought WTF was that. I figured maybe reverse gear was the culprit so I put it in drive to see if it would act up in that gear - same thing as when it was in reverse. The tranny temp was at 169F and not one code was thrown.

I immediately shut it off, put it in neutral, had my brother steer while I pushed it to the curb and I parked it. Went in and had lunch thinking maybe it needs some time to cool off or something. Came out, same thing. It still bucks and shudders when taking off and it wont even move in gear unless I give it gas - it wont "crawl" like any auto car typically does.

The semi-good news is that I have a friend that lives 5 houses down from the restaurant and he let me put it in his driveway. I had to drive it to his driveway (obviously) and you could hear noise like something was dragging underneath the car. But there was nothing dragging, no fluid on the ground, no codes, nothing.
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I take it its time for a rebuild? Only has 62.5k on it. Please give some input, I really would like some opinions on what happened and why from people.

Also, I should add that I noticed high tranny temps when driving the past couple months. For example a few weeks ago it was 67F outside and my tranny temp was 180F during normal rural driving, no WOT downshifts or anything. And the fact that sometimes you could feel bucking when coasting - most noticeable at about 45-60mph. I pinned the blame on the Vararam because I was un-tuned, but that might not be the cause now that I think about it....

Any insight is greatly appreciated.

 

This could be as simple as needing to service the automatic trans (filter and fluid) or as complex/costly as needing a rebuild. The stock auto trans and converter are good to about 400-450 ft.lbs. of torque, if you're putting out more than that and haven't stepped up your converter, it may be chewing up gears.

I don't think you should try to diagnose this over the forum. There are too many things that we can't see or hear that we would need to give anything resembling an accurate diagnosis. I would get it to your favorite local corvette expert or an AAMCO.

 

Get a good tranny shop to take a look at it and determine what the problem is. Good luck - hope it is not something that will be a major expense.

 

Sounds good. Waiting for a tow as I type this.

If its something major, I might just end up doing an A4 to MN12/MN6 swap. I hear RPM does a great, clean job with the swap and the price is definatley right from what I have read on here! I dont know though....so many decisions haha.