Dude, what is wrong with my car?

In the month and a half ever since I got Cara Ann, she has slowly started having problems with the transmission. Or so we thought. She would lunge as I try to put her in gear, and once in 3rd gear, she would jump down a gear and get stuck. The only way to "unstick" her was to pull over, put her in park, turn the van off completely, then turn her back on. This somehow would reset the computer and it would act normal again.

After taking her to several shops and no one knowing what is really wrong (one shop wanted to rebuild the transmission for $1500), one of the car clinic guys and I started doing some research on the problem. What we found out is that the problem is not really a bad transmission. There was a whole list things on particular website to try that costs less than $100. The first thing they did was to replace the input speed sensor. With this replacement, it seems to help resolve the problem of it jumping down a gear and getting stuck. It still lunges (three times) as you go from 1st to 3rd gear, but once it's in 3rd gear, it's fine.

So, in order to resolve the lunging problem, I spent this morning going to three places. We thought if we can get a transmission flush and change the filter, it might solve the problem. The first place I went to was one of our church members, however, he couldn't do it because he was way too busy and couldn't get around to it today. He sent me over to another place, who said they couldn't do it either because they didn't have the proper fittings to do the job. So, he sent me down the street to a transmission place. We told the guy what we wanted, and he recommended that we don't since we haven't done a flush on the van before. (Since Cara Ann is new, we don't know what has been done). He had one of his guys put Cara Ann on the computer to see if any codes come up, and nothing came up. Then he drove Cara Ann with us in the car, and when he parked her, he recommended a complete tuneup.

The decision was to wait and do some of these things at the next car clinic. Hopefully, a tuneup will clear up the problem.

It's interesting how the deeper we get in this problem, the more we find out things, and the further away we get from our original diagnosis. The lesson: Do your research. I could have gone with the first guy and had him take apart the transmission for $1500, and still not found the problem. Even though it "felt" like a transmission problem, my gut instinct said to get a second opinion. Just like doctors, don't be afraid to get a second opinion, or even a third. As women, we should arm ourselves with knowledge and don't get taken advantage of. Unfortunately, that is what happens a lot in the auto industry.