I have a 1998 Nissan Sentra. The car has been doing great when accelerating, but now it sounded like it didn’t want to.
I currently live in a neighborhood where some people (glad a few moved) think I’m a taxi driver. Always wanting me to take them somewhere… It’s been driving in this heat all day through the week and during the evening I was on the highway and I started to feel the car not speeding right.
I push the gas when I’m around 50 or 60 to 75, and it sounds like it ran out of gears… I’m driving in “D” obviously, not in 2 or 1.
I’m going back home and I’m on the normal roads and going 40 to 50 and I pushed the gas half way and it was doing a little bit of a high tone, or it was moaning. I got it above 55 and it sounded a little better.
I have some things going on this week and I need this car to last a little longer. I’m planning on starting my first route in the morning to go to Advanced auto to get some stop slip, would this help keep the transmission going for awhile?
I have to drive a total of 45 miles through half the week… I have to go to the school for open house (not more than 2 miles), might or might not pick up my friend for the senior portraits at school (35 miles), and also have to take one of my parents somewhere. Or is my best bet just getting someone to take us somewhere till we get this fixed?
(lol, well I have an excuse not to take some of these people around no more.)
They do make some additives that might help with the slipping. Look for something that says “miracle” on the can because that’s what you need. If the trans is slipping and the fluid is not low, the clutches that make it go are likely worn. You might get through the week with it. Back off on the speed a bit. If necessary, you might drive in the lower gears, spend more on gas, and arrive at your destination. A rebuild or even a junk transmission is more costly than the vehicle value.
If you have the time and inclination, draining the transmission and changing the filter on the bottom may help. That screen could be plugged and not flowing enough when the speed is high. That is certainly worth a try. If you can’t do it, have a shop do it, preferably not a transmission shop because they are in the business of replacing transmissions.
I just bought Rislone Transmission Stop Slip with Leak Repair this morning.
Not sure if it really did anything yet… Cause it’s still delaying when I’m trying to leave 40mph. I believe it may have did the same when trying to leave the drive way.
Silly question, but do you know how to check the transmission fluid? If you checked it the same way you checked your oil, read through your manual. Generally the proper way is some variation of getting it up to running temp, then slowly shifting through each gear, then checking it.
One thing to check, maybe the overdrive is not engaging, obviously assuming that your car does have an overdrive, if so, does it have a switch to lockout said overdrive, it may have been inadvertenly pressed.
I’m thinking a Sentra wouldn’t have that, but if it did it could look like a few different things. For example, on some vehicles it would be a button that says “Tow/Haul”.
Are there any odd lights on the dash?
Also, what happens if your at speed and you push the pedal all the way to the floor? Can you hear the car drop into second gear? If not, perhaps there’s a problem with the kickdown cable.
Is the engine revving when you try to accelerate or does it just seem to be lacking power? If it seems to be lacking power, make sure the floor mat has worked it’s way up under the gas pedal…a common problem before they started anchoring them to the floor.
My 91 Stanza had one of those. It was a button on the side of the shift lever marked “O/D Off”. If pressed, it turned on an amber “O/D Off” dash light.
Knowing which dipstick is transmission fluid is not the same as knowing how to check your transmission fluid level. You’d be surprised how many people just blithely check the stick before even turning the car on, much less putting it through all the gears like you have to do to get an even remotely accurate reading. This is what Joey P was getting at.
Pulling out the tranny dipstick and looking at the level is not how you check the level and will give you a false reading. Furthermore, since it looks like the engine oil dipstick and it’s not something most people are taught how to do, I can see where a lot of people would do it incorrectly. It’s an easy mistake.
I have no way whatsoever of know if you are aware of that or not. I was just verifying that you did it correctly. All you had to do was say “Yup, that’s what I did”
It would be like if I was having car trouble and someone suggested I check the air filter. Now, the correct way would be to take it out and hold it up to the sun and at least make sure it’s clear. But if all I did was say “yup, it’s fine” they would have no idea as to whether I actually did that or if I just popped the case open and closed it thinking it looked fine. They would be correct in double checking my work.
It’s especially important in a case like this since, if you checked it incorrectly we could spend then next 100 posts trying to figure this out, all based on you telling us the level is full, when all the while it just needed to be topped off. I wasn’t trying to be rude, just trying to make sure we’re working with good information.
By all means turn OD off and leave it off. It’s possible it may go a fair ways like that, before the inevitable complete tranny failure. No way to predict your particular future, but I have a customer who got about another year’s driving out of his tranny by doing this.