A/T Kickdown issues - 2000 OBW Limited Where's the cable?

[nobody]

I should state before anything else that the car has 96K miles and I've
only put on 3000 of them.

The kickdown from 3rd to 2nd at ~30-45 mph is downright ugly. Usually it
won't do anything until my foot is almost to the floor, at which point
it decides it wants FIRST instead. Not good!

I assumed that there was a kickdown cable coming off the throttle plate
shaft. There are two cables there and one was showing about a half-inch
of slack, so I adjusted the slack out of the sloppy one.

I took it out for a test drive, and found out that I'd just fixed the
(minor) slop in the cruise control instead. That was nice but not what
I reaalllyy wanted.

My wife refuses to let me go underneath cars anymore after I tried
bench-pressing a Plymouth Reliant, so I obviously haven't checked there
yet for a cable at the transmission bottom or sides.

I've finally convinced my significant other to let me go under vehicles
if I buy some expensive jack stands. (a 20 year battle won!) but I don't
have them yet.

Can someone tell me if the kickdown cable DOES appear under the hood and
accessible?

PS-- this newsgroup is great!~

 

[etienne]

Unless I am mistaken. Most new cars today do not have a 'kickdown'
cable. The ECU senses the throttle position and all sorts of other
variables like vehicle speed, etc... and then decides if and when it
will drop a gear or even drop two gears.

 

[Carl 1 Lucky Texan]

Unless I am mistaken. Most new cars today do not have a 'kickdown'
cable. The ECU senses the throttle position and all sorts of other
variables like vehicle speed, etc... and then decides if and when it
will drop a gear or even drop two gears.

I agree. This is more likely a problem with old tranny fluid gumming up
a valve seat, a bad valve solenoid or bad TCU. I'd try a 'power flush'
of the transmission. Or 3-4 successive 'drain/refill/drive for a week'
cycles.

Carl

 

[nobody]

I agree. This is more likely a problem with old tranny fluid gumming up
a valve seat, a bad valve solenoid or bad TCU. I'd try a 'power flush'
of the transmission. Or 3-4 successive 'drain/refill/drive for a week'
cycles.

Carl

The tranny was power-flushed about a month ago by a known
"subie-friendly" shop. The owner and head mech said the ATF that came
out actually looked quite good.

I talked to him on the phone today and we decided to drop the pan and
look further. They didn't drop the pan for the flush as this model has
a small spin-on filter for the ATF and not the usual filter inside the pan.

FWIW, I started shifting it manually and holding the shifts to near
redline intentionally and it seems to be improving.