Auto transmission difficult to shift out of park.

[Tripplinger77]

Another question for everyone. Out of the blue my car has become very difficult to shift out of park. The acceleration in drive has also slowed. I am not sure what is going on? With gas at $4.15 a gallon it is a bad time for my little car to start giving me grief. By the way it is a 2001. If you can give me any help it would be greatly appreciated.

[GM Line Rat]

I Had this same problem with the other Metro I owned (Auto Trans). Does the car sometimes feel like it "Slams" into gear when going from Park to Drive ? Also, When you get the car out of Park, Put the transmission into 1st gear instead of Drive and take off. If the car accelerates like it's supposed too, shift the car into 2nd gear as you pick up a little speed, and then into Drive at about 25 MPH and up to full speed (In other words, you are Manually shifting the car). If the car runs good like this, but takes off very slowly when you put it into Drive and try it from a dead stop.........Your problem is most likely the "Shift Solenoids" inside the transmission and they will need to be replaced. You can find low mile COMPLETE JDM Automatic transmissions on E-Bay and the net for approx $250.00......Probably a cheaper route to go if you are capable of swaping out a transmission in a Metro?

[Tripplinger77]

Thanks alot for the feedback. Is this something I can live with for awhile or is it a sign that I am about to completely lose the tranny. It is not a good time for me to lose this little car at all. How much might I expect to pay if I took this into a shop? I am pretty good mechanically, but replacing a tranny is beyond my limits. Thanks again for any help you can give.

[Tripplinger77]

I did a little more research around the net and found some other ideas about the problem. It just seemed to weird that my blinkers and tranny both started acting weird at the same time. I went back and double checked my fuses and found the back up lights fuse was blown. I swapped it out and presto my blinkers were on, but I started to see smoke coming up from the engine. Turns out that my wires going to what I believe is the park-neutral switch are all frayed and shorting out. I pulled it out, cleaned everything up and rewrapped the wires and now both the tranny and blinkers are working again. Thank goodness. Thanks for those of you who gave me some ideas and I hope this helps anyone else who might run across this problem. For some reason they only wrapped the wire bundle half way up leaving a lot of exposed wires in a poor location.