My wife was driving back with her CX-5 from Target. While coming she called me stating her RPMs shot up and car wont go faster than 30 mph. i told her to pull over, i drove over to her and we swapped, she took my truck and i drove her car. I cycled it through P R N D, i felt it engage, so i put it in drive, and sure as **** wouldnt shift out of first. I pulled over after 200 feet. turned car off, turned it back on, everything worked as normal. We unloaded groceries, i hopped in it, drove it hard up and down country roads, and shifted fine, no problems. Plugged my scanner (scangauge 2) no codes, no pending codes, temps are fine. This car just fell out of warranty due to age, it has 61K miles on it. What could be wrong, or was it it a fluke?

 

What is the service life on the "LIFE TIME" fluid, i was planning on doing it at 65000

 

What happened to your vehicle was not necessarily a transmission problem at all, because those symptoms would occur regardless of the reason the ECM placed the vehicle in limp mode (if in fact it did so). There are a number of possible reasons for limp mode, and without a code or any other diagnostic information, it's going to be very difficult or impossible to figure out why it happened that one time.

I recommend keeping your reader in the CX-5, and show your wife how to plug it in and read codes, if she doesn't already know how to do so. And also tell her that if it happens again, to pull over to a safe place and not shut the engine off. Tell her that with the vehicle idling in park, plug the reader in and hopefully read one or more active or pending codes. Capturing freeze frame data (if present) would be a bonus, but it might be asking for a bit more than she has patience for.

 

I have never had a car go into limp mode, is that was it likely was? i would assume CEL or some code would be present if it went into limp mode. If it was, i find it strange the car would allow itself to rev out to 4k rpms..

 

I naturally can't say it was true forced limp mode, only that what you described sounds like it. And I also believe that whatever happened to your vehicle (whether limp mode took place or not) should have resulted in one or more codes being set and the CEL being lit. So my suggestion to keep the reader at the ready still applies, regardless what the actual problem is.

 

Gotcha, i am just hoping it was a one of and not something more serious underlying.

 

And, since there's no information about the problem, that's certainly possible as well. As an alternative to keeping your reader in the vehicle indefinately, for $20 or so you can buy an OBD adapter and install a free ODB phone app, such as Torque. Having a reader always in the vehicle going forward might pay off some day, even if this particular problem never happens again.