My boyfriend’s 2003 Taurus just recently had to have some serious (and expensive!) work done on it. We had a brand new transmission put in last week and it cost us $2550. We picked up the car yesterday morning and all seemed well. Now, he is stranded 2 hours from home. His car is running, but the transmission exclamation point on his dash is blinking. He doesn’t have the user’s manual and I can’t find anything online to find out if he can drive home or we have to shell out more money (!?) to fix it immediately. PLEASE, HELP!
check fluid then call shop that put trans in and ask them what to do.
The new transmission has to have a warranty of some kind, and after only one week, any transmission problem should be covered by that warranty .
As was already stated, ask the transmission shop how to proceed. If they are not available on the phone, have the car towed to the transmission shop and have the tow truck driver park it in front of the shop’s garage door.
Was this transmission work done by AAMCO, Lee Myles or Cottman?
The problem is the car is stranded 2 hours away and we cannot afford the towing cost. And, no, it was a small local transmission company. Also, after checking the transmission fluid, it seemed to have maybe a little too much fluid in it.
I hope not to sound insulting - without the manual, do you know the right way to check the fluid? It must be with the car running, preferably completely warmed up, level ground - shift through each gear, pausing for a while in each one, shift back to park and then check.
If you, for example, check it with the car not running a “little too much” might actually be too little.
if the transmission fluid was overfull when checked with the engine running, then the torque converter splines are stripped out.