so heres the deal. i picked up a 2003 neon sxt with 107,000k that had been lightly tapped on both fenders but no structural damage. i went through the entire car and replaced the timing belt, water pump, upper and lower motor mounts/torque arms, full tune up, die hard battery, after driving the car for the first time the cel came on with a tranny malfunction code and a output sensor code. the car was shifting hard on down shifts and late on the upshifts. i replaced both the input and ouput sensors cleaned all the connections uncluding all the factory grounds. i also added an additional ground from the pcm/tcm bracket to the body. now the tranny is in limp mode and will not shift out of sencond and the speedo is all over the place. after doing some extensive reserch i know the tcm may have to be reflashed by the dealer, shift solenoid may be bad, internals may be bad or possibly electical connections bad.No funny noises from tranny but it was 2 quarts low on fluid. leak was coming from pan gasket. fluid is clean and unburnt. any advice would be greatly helpful as i want to eliminate all possibilities before i replace the tcm/pcm and or the tranny.HELP ME!!!

 

Fill your tranny and fix the leak.

 

the speedo flinging around is an electrical problem. you really need a quality scanner to read TCM data and codes and not PCM data/codes. this will pinpoint the exact problem and you'll get it fixed really easy

 

What was the code?

 

in response to fill tranny fix leak. the leak was fixed and the tranny filled before any test drives.

 

codes pulled are as follows
po700 trans malfunction
po731 gear 1 ratio incorrect
po720 output speed sensor malfunction

 

yep, your car has a malfunction. I'd use a real scanner and see what the transmission computer is saying for codes and data like output speed sensor, CVI values, etc.

if you want to be a parts tosser, try throwing an output speed sensor at it and see what happens

 

read my post. already replaced the output speed sensor. And if i had access to a real scanner i wouldn't be posting any of this! Just looking for common occurrences as that is how tsb reports are made.

 

I just went through trans problems of neutral in all gears cept for first 30 seconds of starting with a loud pump whine and it turned out my filter was clogged up. First I changed the shift solenoid as thats where codes pointed to as possible but that did nothing then I changed filter and fluid and all was fine.

 

what brand of shift solenoid did you get? dealer?autozone?napa?
I'm thinking of getting one but don't have alot of money so just curious. there's a huge difference between the dealer one which i would prefer and the autozone special.