I bought this car with a blown motor and no clue about whether the transmission was good or bad, so I took a bit of a gamble. I put an engine in it and drove it for a very short period and the transmission seemed to work ok, just some slipping and delays in switching gears but eventually it had me left on the side of the road unable to move forward. RPM would raise but car would go nowhere, only reverse worked flawlessly. After draining the fluid twice and refilling and ensuring the the fluid amount was perfect, used Lucas Trans Fix both times, It started to go forward, but extremely sluggish, high rpm, low acceleration until I shifted manually into second gear and it would pick up speed. Then both forward and reverse would no longer work at all. Sometimes reverse would work if I hit the gas a little and then it would catch and begin to move.

So I dropped the sub frame and separated the transmission from the engine, drained the fluid, removed the cooler, cleaned the cooler with air compressor and sprayed all of the excess fluid out and drained the torque converter, opened the pan and cleaned all of the solenoids, put everything back together and filled with fluid and Lucas and now the car will move in forward and reverse again but still just barely. The trans shifts into each selector without hard jerking and without a doubt will shift into the gear but just will not hardly move very much at all. Any advice that could help me? I'm gonna lose my mind.

 

Is it a 2004 with the 4spd auto? They're notorious transmissions for going bad, if it conked out on you and you used transfix without a rebuild to get it moving again, the clutchpacks are probably fried and the transfix gave them a tiny bit of life. Sounds like it's used transmission time to me, or if you're mechanically inclined just do a 6spd manual conversion

 

It's a 2006 auto, non CVT.

 

Have you scanned the car for codes? The valve body is probably on its way out.

 

So an update to this. I studied up for months on rebuilding the transmission myself and ordered a kit. When I opened the trans up some of the clutch disks didn't have any friction left at all, metal on metal. I rebuilt it by the book 100%, all seals, all clutch disks, everything, and I also installed new solenoids for the valve body and took it apart and changed the gaskets. I installed the transmission after putting in a bit of fluid in the TC and now my issue is a bit different. When going through PRND, they all seem to engage and the RPM's change with the line pressure. The car will move in forward and will shift gears, however there is still delay and flaring. After driving the car for less than 5 minutes and coming to a stop, it won't go forward again unless it sits for a bit with the engine off. It will just rev and rev but go nowhere. Sometimes it will limit the RPM to 2500 while it does this, yet the manual gear indicator says 1 and not 5 like the usual fail safe mode. The car will not move in reverse no matter cold or warmed up. The rpm's change when in reverse, indicating line pressure but it won't go no matter how high you reverse. Also I noticed something very strange with Neutral. While in neutral, even on an incline, the car will not roll at all in any direction and ofcourse the brake is not being pressed. One time me and a buddy were able to get it to move in reverse and neutral after rocking the car with about medium force. The only way the car will move in neutral is if I turn the car off. I put the car on 2 jack stands, put it in neutral and I am able to physically rotate the front wheels in both directions without issue, leading me to believe it could be related to the rear brakes or ABS? On the jack stands with the car in reverse, the front wheels do not move but I can move them physically In both directions. The only things I can think of would be a problem in the valve body, the solenoids, the TC or the ABS. I don't know if it's worth mentioning but my alternator doesn't work right now, I have to get a new one. I've just been charging the battery up before test driving around the block before it dies. One other thing that may be extremely important is that the rebuild kit gave me valve body gaskets which (if i remember correctly, im not 100% sure) leave a few holes or passages covered in the valve body. Im not sure if i just got a cheap rebuild kit that didnt have efficient cuts of the gaskets or what. My next course of action is to remove the valve body, check the solenoids for power and whether they are correctly adjusted or not and then im going to re check the gaskets in the valve body because at the time when i was rebuilding it, I probably didn't think too much about whether any holes could be covered or not and I likely thought it had something to do with the fact these valve body's are used in other cars of different manufacturers. Any input or help is greatly appreciated, thanks.