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No more excuses: I'm going to go head-to-head with my automatic transmission and its weird quirks. It's either the quirks or me -- one of us is going to get voted off the island. :) I'm going to dig into it tomorrow, but I'm going to bounce the symptoms off of the list first. I've mentioned some of them before, but I have just been "living" with them -- I haven't dug into diagnosis. We've had the car for a couple of years, and it's been tweaky since the first day I got behind the wheel. However, there's a little bit of pre-history. Bought it via the Internet. My dad picked it up in L.A., and was bringing it to Phoenix. He got half way to Palm Springs, and it blew a hole in the top of a piston. He got it towed (all wheels up on trailer) to Phoenix. On the advice of Steven Ayres, I had the engine rebuilt by JD. (Thanks, Steven!) I then had the car shipped to me in Michigan. Now, I had my dad print out a couple of sheets to tape to the dash -- "Must put in Neutral to start" and "Lift shifter up to take out of Park." Well, when I picked it up in Detroit, there was a *huge* screwdriver sitting in the rear driver's side foot well. Like, I mean, 2.5 - 3 feet long Craftsman crowbar-sized screwdriver. Hmmm... Well, I got it home. One of the first days I had it, I got in it to drive; put it in neutral, started it up... when I went to drive off in reverse, it didn't go anywhere. As I pressed on the gas, the engine was clearly under load, but it was *stuck* -- it kind of hunkered down as I pushed the throttle. I don't remember all of the symptoms now -- I seem to recall having to rock the car back and forth, and try different gear selector positions... I think it kind of went "clank" and broke free. It was like it was in gear *and* in park at the same time, the way it was under load but not moving. I've very rarely used park since then. I tried to get clever once about a year and a half ago, and put it in park, and regretted it, as it did the same thing. Meanwhile, it has never really held the cable adjustment properly. Of course, it's always a bit odd to adjust, as you're supposed to adjust it when it's in park, and I don't dare put it in park. So, I'll drive it, test the selector positions, then adjust the cable to correct. I can get it to be nicely adjusted. However, after a while -- probably after I've shifted down to 2 or 1 on a couple of occasions -- it gets out of whack again and I have to re-adjust. Then it might drift again, and need to get adjusted back the other way; always very odd. It often seems to "settle" one position off -- N actually selects R, the transmission is in neutral when the selector is in 3, and to drive normally I put the selector in position 2. Strangely, these days, I cannot move the selector from 2 to 1 (in order to select gear 2 at the tranny in my offset system) -- it's jammed and won't go. Strange. The transmission seems to operate and self-shift reasonably well, except for park; the only other funny business is the selector/cable and the adjustment. A couple of other factoids... Now and again, the transmission will dump maybe a quarter cup (it's hard to tell) of AT fluid after it's parked. I have found no correlation to hot/cold, full/low, posiiton of car, etc. It'll maybe do it after one trip, then make several happy trips with no dump after parking, then it'll do it again. Weird. Also, my dad reported no funny business with shifting or selecting park when he had the car -- that is, up until it went into the hands of the shippers and their Giant Screwdriver. I have a theory that they didn't read the signs about lifting the gear selector to get it out of park, and either tried to force the selector and/or the cable at the tranny with their Screwdriver from Hell. <shudder> I have no proof, of course. I suspect that the "gets funky when put in park" problem might be separate from the drifting adjustment. I think that the "stuck in park" may be due to problems with the cog thingy in the tranny that locks it. I think that the weird drifting might be due to a damaged/stretched/stretching cable. I'll start with a fluid change. (I am terribly evil -- we've driven the car about 14k since we bought it about four years ago, and I have not changed it. Please don't flame me!) I'll look around to see what I can see regarding the park lock. I may also remove the cable so that I can look it over well and see that it operates smoothly. Any other ideas? The gals are planning a trip for us up to the gold country next weekend -- kid wants to pan for gold. :) Kirsten isn't inclined to ride in the '63 Beetle (king pin, extra-fat anti sway bar, camber compensator, wind noise, 1600DP, and my eager right foot -- I don't blame her), and the bus has "around town only" tires... so the Square's on deck. I need to be able to choose gear 2 or 1 for ascending and descending a couple of thousand feet. (Hm, think I can convince them to go to the 1st Annual Mother Lode Volkswagen Show and Swap Meet in Angels Camp that weekend?) If anyone has experienced any of these symptoms before, or has some clues, please let me know! I'll let y'all know what I find. -Greg ------------------------------------------------------------------- Search old messages on the Web! Visit http://www.vwtype3.org/list/