The audio file wont work for me. Have you checked the fluid? Has there been any other noises leading up to this? Could be that your flex plate broke, they are known to crack. Ive heard of a few torque converters that completely died and would do anything. Check your fluid level with the motor off then running to check if the pump is working or remove a cooler line and see if it pumps the fluid out. After that i would i would drop the pan and check out the magnet. Dont think it would be the solenoid pack, they typically act up and will just miss a gear or 2.

 

Thats a great idea for the pump test and it passed, so the pump is working. No visible flecks in the fluid in sunlight, no leaks and fluid level is good. The only previous symptom has been it would occasionally take a few seconds for the tranny to engage, particularly in cooler weather but it's done that since it was new, now with 162k miles. Because I hear the sound slow down to a stop after the engine has stopped turning tells me that it's something that is after the fluid coupling, almost as if the input shaft has broken (far fetched and not likely since this vehicle has almost never been used for anything other than pavement). I think the attached file downloads into your download directory, at least that's what it did when I tried to open it.

 

If the flexplate were broken, would the engine still turn over with the starter? Looking at how the flexplate makes its connection to the engine output, it looks like they break at the inner section between the ring gear and engine output.

 

Are you sure its the transmission and not a busted transfer case or the rear diff. If the spider gears strip it wont move and might have acted up on turns before it finally went.

 

Rev, Neutral, Drive have no impact on the sound or drive train movement but it is certainly among the things I will look at tomorrow (happy holiday!) while I'm troubleshooting. Thanks for the tip. At this time I'm leaning toward either a failed torque converter or possibly the flexplate

 

 

That makes good sense, especially after everything I have come across today. I was hoping that the input shaft would be saved though. I will probably drop it Christmas or day after and see what I find. Thanks for the lead

 

So just a quick update;
I pulled the tranny, pulled the torque converter and found that the TC stator is destroyed but all splines are intact. However after removing the TC I also found that the stator shaft to the tranny is frozen. I'm not planning to rebuild, now looking for a tranny from salvage