About 130K, 3.8 engine. Started to notice unusual tranny(?) symptom. Reminds me of Mom’s old Honda Civic, our first front-wheel drive, when accellerating on a snow-packed road, the left and right wheels would sort of alternate grabbing for traction. Anyway our 02 G Caravan Sounds that way, as if the left and right side are alternating pulling, especially noticeable when just starting off. I can’t really feel any alternating pull in the steering, just the noise of the drive train.
Any ideas what might be going on? I have replaced the tranny fluid (around 85K, and a couple times since then) with Valvoline ATF+4 synthetic. Symptom has been probably 5K-10K now. Thanks!
Wow, thats a new one to me. You’re going to have to have a trans shop check out the symptoms you are describing. How does it run otherwise when you are not driving in the snow? This is a difficult thing to try to diagnose on line. I would have to see it. Sorry I cant help you any more.
transman
Many of these vans have a traction control system that works off of the ABS system. It’s possible that it may be malfunctioning and trying to apply the brakes when it?s not supposed to.
If yours has traction control try turning it off to see if it the problem stops.
Oh - it’s not in snow, that’s just what it reminded me of. This symptom is on dry pavement. Drives fine other than that.
Yes, it has the traction control, and I had already tried switching that off, does’t help though.
Have to investigate a tranny shop to check it out - hard to do because I generally have low trust with shops - but I’ll report back when I find out something.
Thanks for the replies.
Yea, please let us know what they find. I would find a local independant trans shop and stay away from the large chain type shops.
transman
Took it in to a tranny shop (Coleman Taylor). The manager (very nice helpful guy) drove around and suggested that the noise may be a vibration from something underneath such as exhaust or loose heat shield. He didn’t think it was a tranny problem, but said we could bring it in sometime and they would try to diagnose. Last weekend I crawled under and had a look around, only thing I found was one loose heat shield which I tightened, but still the noise. Took back to C/T, and they also couldn’t track it down, except possibly something coming apart inside the catalytic converter that would vibrate at certain harmonics. No charge for the attempted diagnosis. I’m relieved that it does not seem to be tranny related, but it sure is annoying.