Greetings everyone,
I have a 2005 dodge dakota with a few seemingly related issues. Recently I have noticed that when driving between approximately 40-50mph the transmission I assume starts to shudder. This will happen both in cruise control and when “manually” driving up hill or just when the transmission need to shift up on a straight away. From a stop or while going slow 25mph or so I can accelerate through the 40-50mph with no issues, it only seems to happen when I am cruising along and need to shift. When the shuddering occurs i can either let off the gas or quickly apply more to stop it. I have also noticed my tachometer is behaving improperly as well. I will either stick at times or flutter up and down at others. And lastly, my braking doesn’t occur smoothly at times, it feels like the abs is partly activating but with much less force and frequency. I’m hoping it might all be related to a bad sensor or something along those lines. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
Mileage and last tune up and maintainence info would be helpful. Especially trans service.
It has approx 130K miles on it, last trans service was a little over a year ago. I still take it in for it’s regular maintenance every few months. I have never had any issues with the vehicle before this.
What was served on the transmission? Were parts replaced or was it just a fluid change?
Just a fluid and filter change.
When the transmission was serviced, do you know if genuine ATF+4 fluid was used? Chrysler transmissions are very sensitive to the type of fluid in them, and a lot of shops use a cheaper “universal” fluid with an additive that’s supposed to make it compatible… but it isn’t necessarily. The wrong fluid can cause the transmission to shudder on shifts or during torque converter lockup.
You can test whether the ABS is kicking in by pulling the ABS fuse (the ABS and TRAC warning lights will illuminate, or the ‘Brake’ warning if you don’t have an ABS light) Then try braking. The ABS system will be inoperative, but the brakes will work normally other than this. If the symptom goes away, you know the ABS is at fault.
I’m, not sure what the garage used. Would bad transmission fluid take this long to manifest itself?
I’ll give the ABS fuse a try and see what happens. I was thinking something along the lines of the vehicle speed sensor might be bad and that the 3 problems were related somehow given that they all started around the same time.
Was this truck a V8 or 6,is it 4wd,what model is it? My V6 ST has always had a sorry transmission,but it never shuddered until the calipers went bad,I would check the calipers if I was you,because they can cause an intermittent problem,of course its possible that cheap ATF would take a while to manifest,so good luck,if you solve it,please let us know what the problem was.
Its a v8 4x4 SLT quad cab. Everything from the metal brakes lines on was replaced on both front and rear last summer.
Were the rubber lines replaced too?(sometimes a bad rubber line will have check valve action,by holding pressure and keeping the calipers actuated,I believe the V8s had a better 5speed transmission,then the so called 4 spd on my V6,believe me you,it makes the tach jump all over the place and maybe you should check for a service bulletin on that model year. sounds a little like a lock up torque convertor issue maybe also.
Yes, the rubber lines were replaced.
That pretty well should rule that out then,my truck did it worse in cold weather with the bad calipers,sounds like a transmission glitch now or some type of electronic hiccup(it rattles when it locks up or makes some kind of funny racket,the tach will jump several 100 rpms,when it does its thing.You may want to check the fuel system o that vehicle
Because of the speed at which the shudder takes place, I am going to theorize that the torque converter lock-up mechanism is acting-up. If you can find the electrical connector for the device, disconnecting it would allow you to prove or disprove this possibility.
Have you considered having the truck scanned to see if there are any DTCs?
The symptom could also point to an engine performance issue related to a vacuum leak, MAF sensor fault, etc, etc.