So I drove home today and strolled up my driveway when I tried to push the shift **** to Park, it stopped at "N" and refused to go into "R".

My GS400 is now at the mechanic and I will know the verdict in about 3 hours.

A little history about my ATF. I bought the car at 64k Miles. At my first tune up, my mechanic said my ATF was BLACK. So I changed two quarts of ATF every 3,000 when I changed my oil. My transmission never gave me trouble until two hours ago.

Anyone had this problem? I'll find out the verdict later on today. Worst case scenerio is I have to shell out $2000 that I don't have.

 

Sounds like a problem with the linkage.

 

truthfully,, i would change mechanics,, why would he only change two quarts when the fluid is that black,,, i would have flushed it,, no questions asked...

 

My fingers are crossed.

My brother's ES300 ATF was black too and after flushing it, his trasmissions went out. My mechanic said flushing it may be too much of a dramatic change to what the tranny is use to :shug: So I drain and fill two quarts of ATF every time I change my oil. (Two Qt. is all that would drain out)

 

I know there is a pssibility of the shift lever getting stuck in "park", that's why there that little slot there. You stick a thin bladed screw driver etc. in there to get it to release. Perhaps it's the same issue just going the other way?

 

Good news!

Turn out it's a bad shift lever control (not sure of proper name). I'll be only dishing out $300. The mechanic push down that "emgercy shift slot" thing and it shifted fine.

Thanks for your insights guys.

 

glad everything is working out good for you,,,,

 

That's good news
It's always a major relief when you expect the worst and then it turns out to be something far less serious and much less expensive!....whew!

 

since this was brought up.... what causes failure of this part?

also... how much fluid does it take to flush the trans? when i bought mine used it was pretty black also. the car had been dealer serviced, but it sat for almost 2 years before i bought it. the mechanic charged me for 5 qts of trans fluid to clean it out... i'm wondering if i was taken for a ride

 

Drain and fill is two quarts, and I was told that a complete flush was 12 quarts. The place is charging me $300 installed, which is a major relief! I'm also wondering what causes this malfunction and what this "shift lever control" unit looks like. I'll have my baby back on Thursday.

 

Still get the flush done via the Bilstein machine process (do a search on it).Don't let this fix give you a false sense of security.

 

What was said earlier about the fluid being black and not flushing it is 100% correct. It will shock the system. Best to drain and fills and slowly bring the transmission back from the brink. Where a flush can really help is when one has silvery/pinkish fluid, where microscopic metallic bits are getting into the system and a flush will really help there.