bogart1

My 98 caravan has a slight grinding or crunching sound on occasion...3x to be exact. Once while driving on the freeway it made the noise then slipped into neutral and stayed that way for about 5 minutes. Twice more it happened while parking. Any ideas? Also, while idling, the vans oil light dings. New oil pump? If so, how much$$? Thanks. The van has 163k miles on it.

Only way to make sure the pump is bad is to connect a direct pressure gauge to the system and read the pressure. Other reasons for the light could be low oil level, wrong viscocity oil, or low idle rpm. Cost would be $200-400.

Sounds like your transmission is beyond a fluid and filter change. I would let the pros look at it. Short of that go to Autozone and have them download any stored fault codes with a scanner. It's free. They can tell you what the codes mean. Drop the tranny pan and look for metal shavings. Change the filter and put in ATF-4 fluid. If you see shavings you'll need to have the tranny rebuilt or replaced. Welcome to the forum.

OBTW - The subject line should include something about the problem, not your forum name.