Well, this issue is a first for me. Usually I know what is going on with my vehicles, but this one has me boggled or my tranny is bad.

Truck
2000 Dodge Dakota Crew Cab 4x4
Automatic
Magnum 5.8 liter if I remember off the top of my head, it is a magnum though
about 160k miles on it.
Oil change to synthetic about 5k ago
No recent tranny work as I only bought the truck a year ago and just put 10k on it.
Added Lucas Tranny fluid when it started doing funny things, but no help.

Symptoms-
1. When I sit at a light in drive for 10sec+ and push the gas, not gunning, just normal acceleration. It goes smooth for about 10 ft than has about 3 to 4 surges, like you are hitting bumps, but the road is smooth. Feels like the tranny or rear end is hitting hard, but can't tell which one.
2. This happened yesterday and I very rarely get in these kinda moods. I was pissed off and threw the truck in reverse and gunned it. The truck moved fined with no movement problems, but the whole time I had my foot down it was making a ticking noise for the tranny (thats where I thought is was coming from). When I put it in drive and hit the gas (to the floor again) it made the same noise, and accelerated just fine.

These surges and noises are worrying me. Is it my tranny going out or just needing a fluid change? I plan on doing the fluid change and a once over the truck this weekend.

 

Hello, it could possibly be the Governor Pressure Solenoid or Sensor going bad. Sometimes when they start going bad the Sensor will send crazy signals to the TCM and will get confused on how much pressure to be at causing a confusion of what gear to be in. I would have that checked, a tech can watch this on a data stream with a scanner, alot of shops won't charge for this, try to find one that won't and let them check that.

 

Thanks for the info. I am going to be changing the filter and such this weekend. If it continues after that I will take it in.