My daughter hit a coyote with her 2004 sebring. Insurance paid for the repair, which she had done up where she was working, 150 miles away from home. A week later a cooling hose from the transmission pulled loose from the radiator (I didn’t know it had such a thing)and dumped all her transmission fluid on the highway. A tow and repair job, and she drove back home. A week later, and the same thing happened – the cooling line came loose and she had no transmission fluid. I went to fetch her, and pulled the car to our home-town dealership on a Uhaul trailer. They replaced the hose (quite expensive, but the car ran fine afterward) and she drove it 800 miles to Atlanta where she now lives. Today, 2 months later, she calls to tell me the car won’t shift. She is driving it around Atlanta in first or second gear and staying under 40. The mechanic she took it to down there says he can’t find a problem with it (Huh???) and she says she can’t afford to take it to the dealership, and I can’t get down there to check on it. A side note–her electric door locks and windows don’t work now. So – stupid question of the day – is the transmission sensor involved here, or is the transmission shifting somehow electronic? Could her problem be something as simple as a fuse? She says fluid levels are fine.
It’s possible that the two times it pumped itself out of fluid damaged the tranny. Once that line pops off of the radiator’s transmission cooler, it will pump dry in a matter of seconds.
It sounds like it is in “limp home” mode now. She needs to take it to a reputable transmission shop and get the transmission scanned to see what’s going on before it suffers further damage.