Hello,
Me again.
Another problem that I don't know if it's too urgent or not. '00 Century, 76K miles, 3.1 V6 engine. Sometimes it'll shift hard, like I can kinda feel it jerk a little when it shifts -- ONLY when it's been good and warmed up, like driving on the interstate for 3+ hours when it's above 50 or so degrees outside. Is this a sign that my tranny's in the early stages of going? Can those fluid additives help, one that's supposed to fix hard shifting (I see the Lucas brand in the store, but mechanic also suggested some brand like BJ's or BG's or something?) Do you have any experience or suggestions of what might work for this?
Some more info that might be relevant: Hometown mechanic drove it a couple weeks ago and said, he's not sure if he feels the hard shifting or not, might just be normal, but he did feel that my car doesn't want to shift all the way down into first, like when I take off from an idle, it's in second already. (Well, he could make it go into 1st if he really floored it taking off on an uphill stretch, but just from a regular start, he said it felt like 2nd.) What would make it do that? He suggested it was some valves sticking inside, and said to try a fluid additive. I got the fluid changed about 16K miles ago, so we don't think it's an old-fluid problem. I'm going to try to take it somewhere with free diagnostics and see if he'll plug his computer in to check if it's going through all the gears.
Thanks so much for any help!