Transmission Issue

JOECAT42

MEMBER
2002 KIA SPECTRA
137,500 MILES

Yesterday I was taking my family on a trip to see my mother. Driving at normal highway speeds. Suddenly my 2002 Kia Spectra engine started revving real high like I had put it in neutral. I took my foot off of the accelerator, shifted to a lower gear nothing. Drifted the car off the side of the highway tried putting into all gears. Transmission wouldn't engage in any. I checked transmission fluid level and everything seems to be normal. Can the transmission suddenly go bad like that without warning or is there a computer or sensor malfunction that may be the problem?

1 Reply

CARADIODOC

MECHANIC
33,742 POSTS

Transmissions fail all the time, especially when they hang an unreliable, complicated, unnecessary computer onto something that never needed a computer before. There could be a broken wire, corroded splice, corroded terminal in an electrical connector, broken shaft that runs the fluid pump, leaking seal, ...

The point is there's lots of things that can cause a sudden failure. Many of those are relatively easy to diagnose when there's a computer in the system because it monitors a lot of operating conditions and will memorize diagnostic fault codes that will tell the mechanic which circuit or system needs further diagnosis.