has anyone here wheeled their 3rd gen hard with an auto?

i have wheeled a lot in the last 6 months and now i have a problem with my auto tranny.

it feels like there is like a rubbery feeling while shifting between the gears, not the nice clean click i am used to. operationally it is more or less normal, i had one issue which i am not sure was an issue when i was cruising at around 35 let off the gas then hit it again and didnt get any acceleration and i think i heard a noise... so i shifted to N then back to D and it was perfect from then on.

but i had sirius on loud, so i cant tell if i really heard a noise?

i have gotten advice to look at the linkage, which i will do on saturday, but any other ideas or experiences? my truck has 110K on it.

thanks.

 

I am sure there is a plenty people here that do wheel hard so hopefully they will pitch in
I personally, only use 4x4 when I am going hunting which is about 2.5 month in the year, so I can’t really say much abut how wheeling would affect Auto trany (I am sure it is not easy on it). But I tow 2500 Lbs boat with my 4Runner (100 miles one way) and trany seems doing fine with 96K miles. And I am in Texas so towing normally occurs in 100 degrees heat with AC on.
I would recommend start with basics: fluid level check, change or flush ATF, clean the screen, check the linkage.

 

i dont really wanna flush my transmission fluid until i can diagnose it..from what i gather if you change the fluid, that can actually kill a tranny faster.

 

Dunno about that, but...

I had the same symptom you described after replacing my tranny.

If you've been wheeling hard, it's possible that you bounced off of a stump or somesuch and bent the linkage a bit. If it's not bent too bad, then you can just get away with a 5 minute fix by adjusting the linkage.

If you look under there you'll find the linkage has two mating flat pieces with a long slot in one of them. Put the tranny in park, then loosen the bolt and let the linkage find it's own "home"/"comfortable" spot. Tighten the bolt and you're done.

The problem you're having comes from the floor shifter "locking" into Drive before the tranny's fully engaged, so it's not all the way in gear.


Hopefully that's all it is!

 

Mark, thanks a lot man, i will take a look at it tomorrow

 

Mythbusters should check this out. I had a friends powerglide tranny go out a week after we changed the fluid, but it was a 30+ year old car. I would still change the fluid if it has been more than 30k miles since you changed it. The way I see it, it is a bigger gamble to not change the fluid than to change it.

 

It is true - that often when a transmission is going - a fluid change ends up killing it off. How did you make out with this? if you do have it rebuilt I would try to have some performance upgrades made, if at all possible.