I have 2005 Dakota 4wd with the 545rfe tranny. A little background: My uncle gave it to me for free because it needed some work. It previously had gotten water into the transmission because of the cooler and he had it fixed with a new rad and fluid flush. I have driven it almost 4k miles now and the tranny is fine unless you get around 35-40mph and it tries to shift into OD and shutters and vibrates really bad. I always just got around it by not going 35-40 or just driving with tow haul on.

Just the other day it was snowing and I was driving late at night and had stopped at a stop light. When I took off from the light I heard a “pop” and my check engine light came on and it wouldn’t shift into overdrive. It wouldn’t even try to. So I went home and ran the codes. I got a “P0700” and a “P2706”. I decided to clear the codes and take it for a drive in hopes it would be fine lol. The light
came back on right when I was backing out of my driveway. I turned around and pulled up my driveway and I noticed that it felt like I had to give it a lot of gas to get up the driveway and the torque converter felt really lose.

I was going to just replace the shift solenoid pack and hopefully that will fix it.

what I am asking is, could there be a more serious problem and the solenoid replacement not fix it? I don’t know why the torque converter would feel so different unless it went into a sort of limp mode and stuck in 2nd gear.

the night it broke it was shifting through all of the gears but just not going into overdrive but maybe it went into a limp mode after I cleared the codes? I’ll check to see if it still shifts when I get home.

I want to replace the solenoid this Thursday and get it back on the road.