stuck in third sometimes

[gt tankie]

Greets

Vehicle- 92 gt legacy wagon 4eat 169k

Problem:

Start car hot or cold. When placed into drive it sits in 3rd and stays there no matter what.
Switch off try again- same thing- however,
if I drive off and shift to neutral while moving, switch off and restart, place back into drive all gears are available and things are normal.
If I come to a stop and drive off things are ok.
If I come to a stop and select reverse, park or neutral the problem occurs again.
Power light flashes on every startup indicating a fault but it's dark out so I havent pulled a code yet.

This is becoming more frequent about 90% of the time now.
The fact that the gears are physically available leads me to believe that this is a TCU issue.

Any thoughts?

Gary.

[gt tankie]

I unplugged the tcu for 10 mins to clear all codes then plugged back in and went for drive-same problem 3rd gear as usual.
Got home and did the present problem diagnostic (u no- drive manual on, 3rd manual off, 2nd manual on, 1st manual off half depress accellerator and it flashed code 15 which is shift solenoid 1.
As I understand it when shift sol 1 or 2 fail the trans defaults to 3rd as a limp home feature.
Now my Q is where in the valve body on the trans is this solenoid located and can it be cleaned or must it be replaced?

I have replaced duty solenoid C myself before so this is not strange territory.

Mucho grats.

[Legacy777]

Pretty sure the solenoid is on the bottom side of the valve body, and can be gotten to by dropping the pan.

[gt tankie]

I have photos to upload but I dont know how to get them hosted.
Basically there are 4 photos of the upper vlave body.
The wire that controls shift solenoid 1 has a join in it as all solenoids were replaced in 2000 and the reconditioner used the existing harness. The connections are soldered and wrapped in heat shrink. The heat shrink on shift sol 1 has split and the join was grounding onto the body of the solenoid causing the fault code 15 to appear. Stopping and starting the engine was shaking the trans enough to move the wire away from the sol body but it would creep back.
Everything has been photo graphed on the digi for reference.
I took this opportunity to wash the sols and valve body in kero as it looked slightly dirty.
I will fit a filter in the trans cooler line soon.

Thanks,
Gary

[Legacy777]

Gary,

Thawa has been nice enough to setup a photo gallery
http://bbs.legacycentral.org/viewtopic.php?t=17062

[gt tankie]

Thanks,

Heres those photos:






It's all back together now waiting to put new ATF in.

Hope this works.

Thanks peoples

Gary

[gt tankie]

And heres one to really scare ya, yup there are BALL BEARINGS IN THERE!!



Enjoy.

[free5ty1e]

Wow. I like manual transmissions.

[gt tankie]

can anyone see the photos?

[Legacy777]

yeah i can see the photos.

So you're wanting to know where the spring goes....or a ball bearing?

I watched a friend of my mom's rebuild my valve body when I still had my AT. It was amazing watching him know where everything went.

[gt tankie]

All sorted Josh

I got it abck together last night (worked into the wee smalls actually)
I had a good look into the upper assembly that was still in the car and it became apparent where those 3 springs go.
As a note of interest the valve body wasnt even torqued-the bolts were finger tight. Supposed to 5.7ftlb +/- .5 ftlb
Reconditioners eh must have been close to knock off friday afternoon that day.
Anyway new atf and test drive. Works better than I can ever remember
Having photographed everthing really helped too.
Now I have to put in the new O2 sensor which I found out has been stuffed for the last 3 yrs or so, no wonder my fuel bill has been so high.

Thanks again
Gary

[Legacy777]

Sounds good Gary!

Glad you got things sorted out, and the car drives and works better then ever.