This is for all you straight dopers that are automotivelly minded.
Background info:
1998 midnight/dark blue Chevrolet Prizm
65, 000 miles…40, 000 added by me in the last year (which is when my parents gave it to me after graduation)
3 old tires, one recently replaced
Eeek…Baby and I have been in umm, 7 (hides face) accidents together…no high impacts…I’ve been rear ended four times (I live in Boston) and I’ve backed into cars in parking lots three times.
She’s an automatic
The Problem:
Recently when I’ve been driving my car I’ve had this funny problem. As I’m driving the car…on the highway or the slower roads in my town it feels like the car slows down…almost like she’s driving in an incorrect gear (this dragging feeling) and then she “kicks back” and becomes normal again. This is my car although I’ve left it with my parents and taken theirs up to visit my sister in Montreal-they say they haven’t noticed anything but also they’ve only backed it out of the driveway and nothing else…they’re on vacation so they’re biking or walking everywhere (for exercise blah blah blah). Anyway…the problem initially started on just slower “town” roads but now it happens on the highway as well and it freaks me out. Am I just dreaming it? What’s wrong with the car? Is it the tires having too many miles on them therefore the car is doing this sporadic draggy-wrong gear feeling?
Oh, I should mention that my last back-into-car in parking lot cost me 2000$ to fix and I just got laid off from my job hence I’m asking here and not taking it into the shop right away-I just want to know if this is normal once a car gets to a certain age or if any of you have experienced the same.
yeah, i had a sinking feeling in my heart that it was going to be the transmission-i knew someone that was kind of going through this right before their transmission dropped-i just a.) wanted to avoid thinking that it might be the transmission and b.) wanted to avoid looking like a fool by mentioning stuff I really don’t know much about, hence making presposterous assertions about my car (I think it’s the transmission when it might have been the left anterior ventricle or something like that)
Thanks…I’ll try dragging my sorry ass into the garage when I get back to Boston.
Your car slows down when you drive it because it doesn’t want to be in any more accidents. Seven accidents within a year? Hint: When backing up place your right arm behind the passenger seat and steer with your left hand. This makes it easier to twist your body more and see better out the rear window.
You really need to have a friend who is knowlegable about cars test drive your car to at least get a better description of the problem. Maybe you could find a friend of a friend who is taking an auto shop class at a local community college. But I would hazard a guess that it has nothing to do with the tires being old or any of the recent accidents.
It sounds like a transmission problem to me. Could be that one of those impacts rattled the tranny’s guts and knocked something out of whack and/or you need a trans service (fluid and filter).
Before you go spending a ton of money on a trans. rebuild or something, replace the fluid and filter. I had an '89 Celebrity that did the same thing. I sold it to a friend, and a trans. flush and filter replacement fixed it up pretty good.
My Dad’s Ford Taurus (1993, I think) started doing the same thing at highway speeds. They could never find the problem. A knowledgeable friend of mine thinks it’s a malfunctioning electronic sensor…MAP sensor or O2 sensor, perhaps.
I asked my Dad to try driving in “D”, not “OD” (overdrive). He never did try it. He traded the car before sinking too much money into this elusive problem. Maybe you can try it and let us know? If so, I’d WAG this is a problem with the torque converter.
Regardless, I wag it’ll be hard to find. My '93 Chrysler Duster had an almost-similar problem at low speeds. While coming to a rolling stop - such as approaching a stop sign -the car would jerk forward, almost violently. It was like it didn’t know to slip into a lower gear. (I didn’t think about the “D” vs. “OD” experiment.) They could never find this problem, either, or so they claimed since the powertrain was still under warranty. Of course, the transmission totally failed only 2000 miles after the warranty. :rolleyes: I liked the car a lot, but I traded the sucker…
The Big Three think cars are disposable, and we have disposal income to keep buying 'em!
clarifications…I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned the damn accidents!
65 K total mile-age.
3 orig. tires-I got a flat tire about two weeks ago so one of them is brand new.
The accidents:
I’ve been in 7 accidents over THREE years and like I said…I got rear-ended 3 times [explanation: I live in a suburb of cambridge that has the infamous Minuteman bikepath running through it and this was in the days before they put a stoplight in at the intersection of the roads and the bikepath and gates all around it so several people got rear ended attempting to stop before they killed a STUPID rollerblader that just couldn’t manage to stop themselves because they were going too fast] (hence I collected insurance), another time two people got into an accident right in front of me and the collision and rate of that accident plowed their cars into mine (again, I collect insurance)
I have backed into cars three times in the last year…twice completely my fault (although I’m really tiny and I have a hard time seeing) but once because my mentally deficient parking lot attendant at Bally’s directed me into another car. He got fired, I collected insurance.
LOOK! I just have insanely bad luck with cars! Now get back to answering ze question and stop raggin’ on me for the damn accidents already
Any chance that you have the defroster/air conditioner on?
That, coupled with the load of headlights from driving in the dark this time of year can put a load on the engine.
Not too likely, given that you’ve driven the car for 66K miles and should know what it drives like under those conditions, but I doubt that the Prizm is an overpowered car, so that might be part of it.
Have you cheacked your car for leaks. My car did the same thing, and it turned out I was leaking Transmition fluid from a deteriorating hose. It was really cheap to fix (for a transmition problem). It only cost me about 80 dollars. Best of luck to you.
