About 2 years ago, got new tires, brakes and rotors. (Don't know if that's relevant). Upon picking it up, I immediately noticed that the car was not coasting right. It felt like something is holding the car back slightly. I would actually decelerate going down a slight hill if I don't keep some gas on. I thought it was a brake issue, took it back to shop, they checked it out, noticed the symptom but all the wheels spun freely.

I believe now that it's the transmission, but don't know what to do about it. It's like, when you take your foot off the gas, you expect the car to "FEEL" like it's in neutral and coast smoothly. My car feels like it's still in gear slightly. Any ideas/suggestions? TIA

 

We call it "morning sickness". What has happened is the old seal around one of the pistons that compress the clutches has hardened and this causes delayed engagement. The pressure buildup eventually overcomes this leakage past the piston and that is why it eventually starts moving, also A lot of times it will feel like it jerks when it eventually does go because the pressure has to build up so high before compressing the clutches. DO NOT CHANGE THE FLUID if you have not done it regularly, on an old transmission that is starting to act up changing the fluid is a huge risk, call around, a lot of shops won't do a change on older cars or higher mileage cars unless they know it has been well maintained. Avoid quicklube places like jiffy lube at all cost, many manufactures have tsb's saying to not use flush machines that they use for fluid change. Fluid change will not help the problem you are having, a rebuild of the transmission is sadly your only correct fix. I have seen some of the transmission fix stuff like transx actually help rejuvenate the seals a bit so you could try that but remember its only a band Nox Vidmate VLC -aid.

 

Thanks for the reply. It certainly sounds like that might be what it is, But my car only has 56K miles on it, (maybe 10 - 15K less when this first started), and no one, to my knowledge, has ever changed the trans fluid.

Since this started so suddenly, is there anything else that could possible cause this? It has remained very consistent since it started - hasn't gotten any worse. I was wondering if it was a bad solenoid, or maybe the transmission computer needed a reprogramming, (if that's a thing)?