nimesh71

Good evening everyone,
I have been having transmission problem entire winter and I belong to Windy city, Chicago. I purchase my car as pre-owned / off lease from Highland Park Lexus dealer in 2012.

Since, last few years, I have been experiencing transmission shifting problem in 2008 ES 350 (now 84K miles on it) randomly and rarely. Couple years back, I drove my from home to go out some where near by, it was just fine but at first signal light (about quarter mile from my home), I found strange indecent with this car. Signal light was red and I was first person in the lane. It was so scary and embarrassing that car was not picking up speed more than 5 miles per hour when signal light turned green. I had to pull the car to the side of the road. I moved gear stick back and forth couple times; it worked fine after that.
There are couple more incidents like this in the past as well, when I pulled the car from my garage and put in forward gear. When I hit gas paddle, only engine RPM went high (4000) with noticeable engine noise but car was moving barely. I had to stop the car. Again, let go gas paddle, move stick back and forth few times then slowly catch up on speed.
These are random occurrence that I didn't pay much attention.

But this winter, I have experienced (almost everyday) that car was not shifting to first gear after pulling out of garage and engine went really high on revolutions/noise. With all random tries, it finally get engaged and then onward, it functioned OK. Whenever I warmed up the car in garage and let it run for 10 minutes before start driving, no issues.

Even today, it was not so cold out there, but still 40s, I started driving car without warming up, it was slight issue on picking up speed. I finally thought to take care of this problem as this could led to some serious trouble or accident.

Do you have any suggestions what it could be? Any one has experience like this? I read some post but didn't get answer on root cause. Transmission is obviously out of factory warranty, so, afraid to go back to dealer as I might get into very expensive solution.

I recently had transmission fluid flushed/refilled following leaky radiator replacement prior to winter.

Any hint on problem or advice will be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Nimesh

dreyfus

There have been others with this issue - you can search the early threads for their posts. I don't know if there was ever a common source found for this.

But you're right, it is a scary and potentially dangerous thing to lose power like that. You'll have to take it to a tranny shop (or the dealer) for a solution and hope you don't have a $$$$ bill. At least a diagnosis will give you options. Good luck!

Clutchless

It may be the common shift flare issue, or some other common problem often discussed in this forum. You may want a dealer or transmission shop to inspect it. I was going to ask who did your transmission flush and what fluid did they use? This was because the fluid level is hard to adjust on this car and it is sensitive to that. But since your problem existed before, it may not matter.

nimesh71

Thank you so much for earlier two responses to this thread.

First of all, let me correct myself, as I learnt. I had ATF refill done in my car and not flush. Sorry for incorrect term.

Today, I called Jeffy Lube that had performed ATF refill last year. I asked ATF type and level but from the conversation it was concluded to bring back the car to make sure level is correct. BTW - they have standard global ATF used in my car. Don't know much what does it mean. Good / bad / OK.
However, after verifying level, they found out it was about 1 qt low and filled it back to the level required. I feel happy about it as I might not need to spend $$$ on transmission. But have to test drive few days in the morning during colder weather to confirm.

Thanks again,

Nimesh