On Monday, I noticed the car was behaving funny. As I would gently brake to approach a stoplight, the car would jerk forward before stopping. I was pretty sure that this was transmission misbehavior, which is never a good thing. Later, I tried a hard stop and had to manually shift into second gear to get the transmission supply any significant power to the wheels. Not good.
I asked Gretchen to check with a friend at Meineke to see if he could recommend someone. The recommendation came in, I called and made arrangements to take the car in on Wednesday. And then, on Tuesday on the way home, the O/D Off light on the dash started flashing. Also not good.
I grabbed the manual from the glove compartment and paged through it at various stoplights. It said "Take the car to the dealer for servicing". Well, yes, I knew that. But a failure to shift correctly in and out of overdrive would account for every symptom I was seeing.
Under the circumstances, I decided to take it directly to the tranny shop and drop it there last night on the way home. This morning I got the call. It's time to rebuild the transmission.
*sigh* So I'm having the transmission rebuilt, because the alternative is buying a new car which isn't the car I really want to buy right now. OTOH, with any luck (knock on wood), that'll keep things running nicely for another year or more.