Transmission help

I have a 97 cav with the three speed auto. Kid that had it before me was backing up and slammed in in drive. After that car stopped moving. Think this may require a new tranny or could it be a much easier fix. Thanks for any advice.

If you say someone "SLAMMED" it into drive. then this could mean a broken cable etc,,,

one way to tell if the Gearing Cable is malfunctioning is to Put the car into Park, Put the key into the car and turn it, if it turns, this is a good indication that that car is indeed in park!

Put the Gear in Drive, Put your key into the Ignition now. You should not be able to turn the key. if you can, you need to have a helper to change the gears while you look at the control arm on the transmission to see if it is operating correctly. if the Control arm is working, look closer to make sure that the control arm is serving its purpose, is it really moving the tit on the transmisson, or has it been stripped? if thats working, then its a bad transmisson.

Well I can start the car in park and in neutral but not in drive. Noe if I start the car in park and then put it in drive (with engine running) then I go back to park the tranny will grind for a few seconds. I am almost 100% sure I could push the car when it was in park. I know I could when it was in drive or reverse. I dropped the lower pan off the tranny and didn't see any metal shavings or anything like that so I thought that was a good sign. Wow I may luck out yet. So what could the problem be?

It's Really hard to say without being there looking at it, i mean it could be anything. I had a car to do that with me only to find out it was the tork converter not working anymore, that can also cause a car not to pull at all.