advice needed: 2 Tranmission Failures in a row...

[shoebox]

Hi -- please excuse the lengthy post, but I wanted to give as much info as possible in hopes of getting some useful advice.

I have a '02 Dodge Neon with about 55k miles on it. About 3 months ago, the transmission locked up while I was driving down the highway. I could not even drive the vehicle. From a standstill it would barely move when throttling it, and it would just "drag". The check engine light did not come on.

I took it to a local dealer. They did an inspection of the tranny and told me that so many parts were damaged that a rebuild would not be cost effective. They quoted me $2200 for a new tranny including labor.

I could not afford this so I ended up purchasing a used transmission from a salvage yard and getting it installed by a family member who has done tranny swaps in the past. When I got the car back, it was "bump-shifting" on the down shift from 2nd to 1st gear. It bump-shifted 100% of the time when coming to a stop, so, per the recommendation of the person who installed it, I took it back to the local dealership.

The tech at the dealership reported that he found no initial problem, but he reset the computer and did a "re-learn". When I test drove the car, the bump-shifting was gone and never returned.

BUT... a few days later, as I was coming to a stop, the car STALLED and the engine shut down out of nowhere. I restarted the car to find the check engine light on and the car would not shift out of 2nd gear. My car had gone into LIMP MODE. I took it to the dealer the next day and they diagnosed it to be a "SOLENOID CIRCUIT FAILURE". They quoted near $500 to fix it and recommended I contact the salvage yard for possible warranty coverage.

The salvage yard has been very skepticle about replacing the SOLENOID PACK and they are telling me that it may be an electrical problem with the car and NOT part of the transmission they sold me. I had the owner speak directly with the dealership who verified that it is indeed a part on the transmission that is defective and not the car's electrical system. Yet STILL, the salvage yard remains skepticle and now wants me to deliver the car to them so they can inspect it themselves. Shouldn't talking to the dealership be enough?

The car is still at the dealership at this very moment.

My next step is to probably let the salvage yard do their inspection before my 90day warranty runs out, but I am wondering if there could be some other cause for my ongoing transmission problems.

The dealership also said that once this solenoid problem is fixed there may still be more internal damage to the transmission. At this point, I am not sure all this is worth the risk to try and fix my car. I've already put almost $1100 into fixing it and the salvage yard is only going to cover cost of parts (or replace them with more shoddy/used parts).

I did a bit of research and found this article on allpar.com talking about how incorrect fluid and/or filter can cause problems like this in older models. Is this still a problem? Is Dexron bad?

Here is an excerpt from that article talking about the tranny needing a rebuild to fix bumpshifts...

The article also talks really bad about DEXRON fluid and says NOT to use it.

The underdrive clutch is the primary cause of all other bump down complaints (the piston seal leaks causing the computer to command 100% duty cycle of the UD solenoid causing harsh downshift). A rebuild is the only repair for this root cause.

Sometime you can flash the computer [reprogram] to the latest specs and it might work. The computer learns the cvi's [clutch volumn indexs] which in turn tells the solenoid pak how long to keep any given solenoid open to send fluid to a clutch pack. This will only work with clutch paks that are in good shape with the right clutch clearances. If the clutch clearances are bad this will not work properly. If the seals are bad, you will only try to cover up a problem and it will come back. The only way to fix this problem is to overhaul the trans with the proper trans kit and parts. The mopar kit has all the newest and correct seals in it.

Any help at all would be appreciated.

[Stoga]

Originally Posted by shoebox

The article also talks really bad about DEXRON fluid and says NOT to use it.

Sorry for the long time lag, but if anyone put Dexron in your Neon tranny, it's probably the biggest contributor to your problems.
I had to be cautious about what the garage would put in my 2000 GC, even had to delay the 1st transaxle service until I was sure the place doing the service had the correct transmission fluid.
As for your 1st transmission, it's hard for me to hazard a guess what happened other than to guess the transmission was never serviced.
I change my transmission fluid religiously at 30,000 miles, typical service intervals are longer, but I still have my original transaxle in my Caravan, closing in on 140,000 miles, despite many predictions of imminent failure from non-Mopar fans.
Hope you got your problem with your Neon taken care of!

[LoneWolf013]

I've had that prob for awhile with my 1st gen neon , when your get your tranny overhauled make sure they use ATF tranny fluid (or AFT I'm half asleep ) Auto zone carries it , I still have the bump shift prob but I just started using ATF I haven't had the time to drain the evil dextron-3 out of my lil import slayer , I hope this helps ya out

-LoneWolf013