Yesterday I was on the highway with the cruise control on, flat road no incline, and the trans suddenly shifted to 5th then to 4th and the RPM's went off the charts. I pulled off the side and stopped immediately, here is where its funky. When I tried to manually shift it would not respond, numbers were not showing up for the gears on the dashboard. I couldn't tell what gear I was in but it was about 3000rpm at 30mph and wouldn't shift at all, it also felt like a really loose torque convertor or slipping clutches. I got off the highway, turned the van off, turned it back on and everything was fine. I drove another 200 miles with no issues. Today I just started the van, put it into reverse, VERY loud clunk, and no reverse. I tried all sorts of scenerios and if I held it about 1000-1200 rpm I was able to back out of the parking spot, all 6 forward gears are fine. No codes come up on my scan tool. I'm an ex Ford mechanic, don't know much about Dodges, can anyone point me in some direction?

What upsets me is I only have 61,000 miles on the van and treat it like a baby.

Thank you all!

 

I've been searching and trying to find some info. I used the oil dipstick to check the fluid level, looks great. Fluid that was left on the stick was a nice pink color, smelled a little different than normal trans fluid but I'm not sure how to describe it. I drove it around the neighborhood again, all 6 forward gears work great and hold very strong, I tried flooring it once to see what would happen and it felt solid. Still, no reverse, you can just barely get it to creep just above idle. Also, it still clunks really loud going into reverse. I mean LOUD, not like the normal Caravan clunk.

 

Update: today it finally threw a code. P1790 this doesn't tell me much though. Took it to two trans shops and they said it needed a full rebuild, don't believe either of them because they gave very different reports about what they found from diagnostics and that doesn't make sense to me. When I questioned that they back peddled. Does anyone have any suggestions?