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Transmission failure after a car wash?

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J

JohnPal

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1992 VandenPlas 4.0 liter engine. Car is in great shape with under 100K miles.

Recently, after taking it to my local car wash the transmission failure light on the instrument panel came on and the transmission went into "limp" mode. When this occurs, the transmission will not down-shift from third gear. I decided it to drive straight home and park it until I could take it to the mechanic.

However, the next morning (to my surprise) everything was fine. The light went out and the transmission returned to it's normal, smooth shifting.

So, two weeks later having forgotten about the incident, I had it washed again and the same thing happened. Light on after the car wash, limp mode, then fine the next morning.

It seems to me that some switch or connection is getting wet and causing the onboard computer to think there's a transmission failure. Then, when it dries it returns to normal.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.
John.
 
Check the crank sensor. Located over the balancer in front of crank. We had this happen when they were new and we only found it by putting on lift and running car and spraying water on it. You can lay in front and spray up at it and see if it happens to reaccur. Same with transmission switch on side of tranny.
 
Disconnect your Throttle Position sensor then clean and pack the seals with waterproof grease and dielectric on the contacts.
 
The trans has electronic controls, and a plug in the trans body. Water could be getting into that. The other thng is that there was a service bulletin about water entering the trans computer via the wiring harness. It is located under the RH side of the dash.. I don't have the info handy, but I would guess that it is online somewhere. Remove the RH under dash panel, and look for signs of water entry. Meanwhile, don't go to the car wash.One last thing, check the cowl drain in the engine compartment, near the wiper motor. If that is plugged, water can overflow the heater inlet into the car, with the same results as above.
 
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