2000 Caravan problem (speed sensor perhaps?)

Hi all,

Last night, while going up a slight incline at 65, my 2000 Caravan started acting sluggish and sputtering a bit, and the transmission light started blinking. Made it to a gas station nearby (5 minutes...but not before we started to smell burning tranny fluid), and found that it was idling extremely rough in Park as well (as in, the whole van was shaking badly like it was missing a cylinder and struggling to idle). Added fluid (it was at 'add'), and limped her home (15 minutes).

Upon takeoff from a dead stop, it almost bogs down, but will get going while sputtering. One up to speed, it seems to hold it's own, but the tranny light goes from blinking to solid and back again every 20 seconds or so, and the smell of burning tranny oil got pretty bad by the time we made it home.

This morning, even on a cold start, the engine runs smooth at idle for about 5 seconds or so, then very rough again. Tranny light still doing the same thing.

I did the in-dash self test for the codes (holding trip and reset while turning on the key) and got error codes 23 and 55. I found one online list that said 23 meant speed sensor. I also called the local dealer and described the symptoms to the service guy (but not the codes I had), who said 'sounds like a bad speed sensor'. He then told me it would be a $250 repair. I then went online to find them to be $22 and supposedly a 5 minute replacement repair.

Can anyone tell me:

1) does this sound right based on the symptoms
2) exactly where is this sensor located on a 2000 Caravan Sport (I am assuming input sensor, since I still have a working speedo), and what is the best way to get at it?

Thanks in advance,

-Kevin

You might want to recheck your codes: Code 23 is not a speed sensor nor does it sound like your problem.
23* Incoming air temperature sensor may be bad.

Codes are found here:
http://www.allpar.com/fix/80s-codes.html

that is where I got my codes from...only I went to this section, since mine is a 2000 model and it said this list covers 2001 and most late 90's and newer:
http://www.allpar.com/fix/2001-codes.pdf

i can tell you it's not a speed sensor, i myself had a speed sensor problem, and i've had several customers with bad speed sensors, they never had sympthoms like this. a bad speed sensor would cause the transmission to run in low gear and the spedometer to not function

I'm fairly certain you are looking at the wrong place for the codes. The codes in that table are 4 digits large and begin with a "P" (i.e. ODBII codes). your were looking at the hexadecimal "offset" field in the table and I have no idea what that means. You have the two digit versions of codes. "55" is end of list and "23" is the air temperature sensor.