Hi Folks,

I was driving my 2001 Caravan (107,000 miles) locally last night, when without notice the van slipped out of gear and wouldn't go back into any gear. It's an automatic transmission. The van will stay put in Park, but none of the other gears work. There have been no signs of the transmission going bad at all. We had it towed to my mechanic and when he checked it out this morning, all of the codes checked out, but the tranny computer came back as "No Data". Neither he nor I knows what to do next. Does this mean that the tranny computer is shot (it was replaced once before, before I owned the van), or is there something with a relay or connection that we should be looking for? I should mention that the guy who towed us, who was very helpful, did some very basic checking and cleared the computer, with no luck. Any help/advice that could be provided would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

Best,
Rob

 

This is a long shot....On my 94 3.3 I had an apply piston in the tranny sheer off. Tranny buddy had never seen this before. Peculiar thing was when it was running and you put it in gears, you could hear it actually shifting through the gears, but the apply piston could not transmit it to motion in the vehicle. I had no warning, no codes and no clue til we took it apart. Fortunate thing was, no significant metal went through the tranny. Try starting the motor and listening to see if the tranny sounds different as gears are manually applied. If color of fluid is good and nothing out of the ordinary is in the pan , it might be something similar. A seal might have totally blown by and is leaking so much pressure it can't move...There are lots of hidden possibilities. Good luck and let us know what you find.

 

Hi Folks,

Just got my minivan back from the transmission shop. It turned out that my convertor was stripped, which was the cause of the problem. A few days later and many dollars lighter, the van is back in business. This was a new one for me.

Best,
Rob