91 Grand Caravan- Wont go in 3rd gear

break911 · #1 01-12-2005, 01:14 PM

Hello all,

I bought this van from a family friend so they only charged me 100 bucks.. its my first car so i dont want to spend any money on it if i dont have to.. it wont go into 3rd gear.. i can hit 90 km/h on second but its at 4500 rpm.. im afraid to take it higher than that cause the engine might fail on me..

it has 140 000 km, the tranny was rebuilt about 8 months ago with 10 000 km on it.. when i got an oil change they said i gotta flush my fluid cause its dirty (but full) but thats gonna cost me around another 100 bucks.. if thats not the problem i really dont want to do it cause im fine driving in the city under 80 at 3000 to 3500 rpm on second..

this happened after 1 day of driving it.. before that it sat for 3 moths in my garage..

so my question is.. is it the transmission thats gone.. or should i do the tranny fluid change compleately?

If you can help me out i would appreaciate it.. drop me an e mail at [email protected]... thanks!

ps. everything else on the van is amazing and runs great..

HiRez_L · #2 01-12-2005, 03:15 PM

The van is in limp mode, changing the fluid may help, but there are a lot of things that can cause it to go into limp mode, as you'll see if you look through the threads here.

break911 · #3 01-12-2005, 03:21 PM

hmm.. another thing which i did recently is remove the battery.. i read in a few threads that i have to retrain my tranny? how do i do that and if i cant.. how much does it cost?

HiRez_L · #4 01-12-2005, 04:02 PM

There are 2 opinions about retraining. One school of thought is to drive it back and forth over a couple miles of road, crusing at different speeds, ie, a couple miles at 20mph, a couple at 30 mph, etc. You will need a couple miles of deserted country road to do this. The other school of thought is that normal driving will retrain the tranny after a couple days of regular driving.

break911 · #5 01-12-2005, 05:13 PM

hmm... than its definately not that because i drove it for a 45 minute drive back and forth.. been driving it like this for 5 days.. im going to buy a transmission kit and change gasket, filter and fluid on friday.. hopefully that will help..

also my neighbour was saying something about pulling a plug or cable out.. whats that all about?

He said he had a buick that didnt go in third than he pulled some cable or plug out than it went into third!

break911 · #6 01-12-2005, 07:51 PM

also.. 20 percent of the time.. it has problems going into second.. i have to rev it to 3000 and let it drop so it can cath second gear.. when its reving in first its not accelerating and its giving a slight vibration coming from lower part of engine..

however third still is unobtainable..

theFREAKnasty82 · #7 01-13-2005, 12:48 AM

do you have a check engine light?

papi62596 · #8 01-13-2005, 06:08 AM

I had this happen to my Grand Caravan and it was the sensor inside (sometime outside) of the tranny. Dodge has a safe mode on there transmissionas that allow you to have 1st and 2nd gear when something is wrong. Kind of save you from burning up the tranny. I can't remember the name of it,but I think it's the power train control module or transmission control module. If you take it somewhere and have a diagnostic run on it they can tell you for sure. I didn't get a check engine light when mine went bad. They scanned the computer for faults and it told them that my tranny was not shifting into 3rd.

Hope this helps.

papi62596 · #9 01-13-2005, 06:08 AM

I had this happen to my Grand Caravan and it was the sensor inside (sometime outside) of the tranny. Dodge has a safe mode on there transmissionas that allow you to have 1st and 2nd gear when something is wrong. Kind of save you from burning up the tranny. I can't remember the name of it,but I think it's the power train control module or transmission control module. If you take it somewhere and have a diagnostic run on it they can tell you for sure. I didn't get a check engine light when mine went bad. They scanned the computer for faults and it told them that my tranny was not shifting into 3rd.

Hope this helps.

papi62596 · #10 01-13-2005, 06:08 AM

I had this happen to my Grand Caravan and it was the sensor inside (sometime outside) of the tranny. Dodge has a safe mode on there transmissionas that allow you to have 1st and 2nd gear when something is wrong. Kind of save you from burning up the tranny. I can't remember the name of it,but I think it's the power train control module or transmission control module. If you take it somewhere and have a diagnostic run on it they can tell you for sure. I didn't get a check engine light when mine went bad. They scanned the computer for faults and it told them that my tranny was not shifting into 3rd.

Hope this helps.

break911 · #11 01-13-2005, 07:30 AM

hmm than i shouldnt change the fluid and filter?? will they charge me just to find out what is wrong??

HiRez_L · #12 01-13-2005, 07:34 AM

Never a bad idea to change the fluid and filter, especially if you haven't done it, and the garage is saying it's dirty. That could fix it, or you could need new sensors, or, as your neighbor said, you could have a loose or pulled cable, if any of the connections to this tranny (except for the backup light, I think) gets disconnected, it drops to limp mode.

theFREAKnasty82 · #13 01-13-2005, 10:09 PM

chances are it is the output speed sensor which is mounted towards the back of tranny close to the LF tire. Those have a tendency to go bad on the A-604 transmissions

nipsirc · #14 01-14-2005, 12:00 AM

I had a similar problem on my 91 Plymouth voyager. It is very hard to change gears intermittently. Sometimes it would just go and then sometimes it would take a very hard push and pull (almost afraid it would break it) to change gears.
All I did was do a tranny service (change oil, gasket and filter and flush the whole dirty stuff out) and then bingo.... no more problems.... it was like new....

bkyrdmacnik · #15 01-14-2005, 05:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by break911

Hello all,

I bought this van from a family friend so they only charged me 100 bucks.. its my first car so i dont want to spend any money on it if i dont have to.. it wont go into 3rd gear.. i can hit 90 km/h on second but its at 4500 rpm.. im afraid to take it higher than that cause the engine might fail on me..

it has 140 000 km, the tranny was rebuilt about 8 months ago with 10 000 km on it.. when i got an oil change they said i gotta flush my fluid cause its dirty (but full) but thats gonna cost me around another 100 bucks.. if thats not the problem i really dont want to do it cause im fine driving in the city under 80 at 3000 to 3500 rpm on second..

this happened after 1 day of driving it.. before that it sat for 3 moths in my garage..

so my question is.. is it the transmission thats gone.. or should i do the tranny fluid change compleately?

If you can help me out i would appreaciate it.. drop me an e mail at [email protected]... thanks!

ps. everything else on the van is amazing and runs great..

From bkyrdmacanik:
Sounds like you have the same problem that I was having. All I did was to find the two relays on the firewall that are just left of the center facing the engine. Disconnect the male connector from each relay and reconnect in reverse. The relays are the same and all you should lose are you back-up lights until you get new relays. I'm just going to buy two new relays and replace them. Hope yopu have the same results that I had

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