Hello, I'm new to the forum and looking for a bit of help with a serious problem. My girlfriend drives a 2002 Hyundai Accent A/T with a 1.5L SOHC in it. The other day we were driving in it and she came off of a ramp and accelerated into traffic. When she eased off of the accelerator to come to cruising speed, it came out of overdrive but instead of going into gear it went into a neutral state. In order to get it back into gear, I told her to disengage O/D, which seemed to work. At that point, I figured she lost O/D at the very worst... I was wrong.

It stayed in gear just fine, and then we got to a red light. Upon accelerating away from the red light, it accelerated in first gear to a reasonable shift point, but then instead of shifting up, it shifted into a neutral state for a few seconds, and with a little bit of coaxing (light reving up and down), it SLAMMED into gear. We parked up so that I could check her transmission fluid level (looked good), and then when it was time to pull ot of the spot, we found out that she no longer has any functioning reverse...

I pushed her backwards out of the spot, and we limped the car home. No check engine light came on during any of this, until at one point the car simply would not shift itself into gear (just stayed in a neutral state), and after a bout 30 seconds of trying to coax it into gear, the CEL came on... We were able to pull the car over, put it in neutral, turn the car off, turn it back on, and then contiue our limp home, slamming every gear along the way.

She took it to the dealership yesterday just to get a diagnostic/estimate, and they are telling her that "her transmission is shot" and they want 2200 dollars to make repairs...

My question is, do these problems sound consistent with a ruined transmission? I was more under the impression that these problems seemed like a bad TCM or something similar... Once the car would get itself into a gear, it had no problems at all staying in that gear and driving normally... the problem seems to only be shifting between gears, no reverse gear, and no O/D. Also, judging by the way the car was slamming itself between gears, the clutch packs seem to be pretty healthy (lol).

What are your guys thoughts? My mechanical experience is intermediate to advanced, so I have no problems getting my hands dirty to fix this thing if it's fixable, unfortunately my expertise does not extend to automatic transmissions.

Also should note that the transmission is having no problems whatsoever shifting down, and no problems whatsoever starting in gear from a stand still... the problems only arise inbetween gears (upshifting), and a lack of reverse, and a lack of a functioning overdrive. There was also no warning signs before this started happening. She never had any problems with transmission slipage or anything like this... it just happened all of a sudden.

This post has been edited by millman12345: Aug 26 2008, 10:39 AM