appreantly my car has been shifting hard since 1998..
 

So the original owner was nice enough to keep all the records, well most records of the maintenance done on the car, I came across a paper from January 26 1998. Car had 50,228 miles at the time, it states "ADVISE TRANS WONT SHIFT INTO OVERDRIVE, ALSO HAS HARD UPSHIFT 1ST TO 2ND GEAR" My car does jerk when shifting gears.. what does this mean for me? I was about to replace the transmission fluid tomorrow thinking that maybe the reason its shifting hard is because maybe the transmission fluid hasn't been replaced in a long time but for it to already shift hard at 50k miles.. what could it be??


I really wanted to change the transmission fluid but I've been hearing that it isn't wise to do so if the previous owner has never changed the trany fluid, My car has 92k miles, should I just take my chances and replace the fluid?

The only reason some people have a problem with changing trans fluid is because of the cleaning properties of new lubricants - a lot of times, it will clean things that work by virtue of being dirty (imagine a crack in something that is filled in with crud, and then washing that out).

I recommend changing the fluid. If it hasn't been shifting well, that may be the cause. It can hardly make it worse if you're already having issues with it. Usually, people only don't recommend changing the fluid if it's just routine maintenance and there are no problems (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). If there's a problem, you should.

I guess the only thing that worries me is, that its been shifting this hard for this long, someone said replace the transmission strainer? where is that even located at??

It sounds like the main problem is that you purchased the car without actual reading through any of the service records. In retrospect, it probably would've been better for you browse through them a bit more closely. Might have been able to save yourself from a potentially expensive tranny job. Or, even better, you should've bought one with a 5 speed.

thanks for the advice..it all makes sense now..

agreed.

Well, hindsight is always 20/20....don't beat yourself up too bad. It'll probably wind up being about a $2500 lesson for the next time you purchase a used car.

Lesson #1-don't just buy a car from an owner that has complete service records. Read the complete service records before you buy it.

Yeah I get what your saying, well I thought it was a steal of a deal when I first bought the car, 2,000 for 1990 auto with 88k miles. I'll be doing a tranny flush sometime next week, hopefully that fixes, the problem. I'll keep you guys posted I guess