eastowners

Here’s the car up on stilts. It seems I’ve collected the needed tools to get a car up in the air safely.

This is what is under that mysterious maintenance-free tranny pan. Notice that I still hadn’t removed the filter seal, but the filter is removed and I’ve tried to clean up most of the mess.

Here is the nastiness that was in that mysterious maintenance-free tranny pan. You can see the old filter discarded in the yellow drain pan in absolute disgust. This was a messy messy job, but I did get it done; as a matter of fact, much faster than I expected.

Everything is back together and the tranny is refilled with fresh fluid (almost 5 liters of it). I took it for a five mile run around the city and everything (with two exceptions) checked out. The first exception is that I drastically need to replace the 100% water coolant non-mixture with a refreshing 50/50 mix of coolant and water… water was boiling, but it was a short ride, so no worries. The other exception is that I think the shift position sensor (or somesuch) is dorked up. Here’s the scenerio…

I drive the car, stop, put it in park (confirming that it’s in park and not in any other gear). I shut the car off and pull the key. When I put the key back in and turn on the ignition, the gearshift indicator says it’s in Neutral and it refuses to start. I turn the key off (leaving it in… not taking the key out). I shift through all the gears going from Park to 1st and back to Park. Then the car starts without issue… the gearshift indicator says the car is perpetually in Drive or it says it’s in all gears. Probably not the best situation. I gotta give the guy at Autosports one more call and ask him if that’s the issue. If so, guess I’ll have to get a new sensor (or whatever).

The good news is that there is no longer increasing amounts of funk in the coolant and the tranny seems to be behaving… at least for now.