93 Lexus Es300 Shift Solenoid Failure 3Vzfe

[Hoopes999]

Hello all,

A few days ago when placing my car in drive it seemed like it wanted to start in 3rd gear. I ran the diag codes and got 62 and 63 indicating that the #1 and #2 shift solenoids have failed from either an electrical issue or they are stuck. This seemed to happened right after I was messing with my throttle position sensor, not sure what kind of part that played in the malfunction.

Basically I was wondering if anyone has changed these out by themselves. In the research that I have done it appears that the valve body has to be removed and that scares the -- out of me.

If anyone has any input it would be greatly appreciated.

thank you

[gbhrps]

hooopes999,

You said it, "it scares the *** out of me". That means leave it to the pro's to diagnose. Yes, it may be that the two solenoids are at fault, but there may be many other issues that can cause them to glitch. Don't throw a bunch of money at the problem and still have a transmission that acts up.

There is no history that I can find on line that shows this is a common issue on these trannies. Hence, there aren't any common solutions that pop up.

I did just such a job on an 03 Ram pickup recently, and it was a breeze with excellent results. But, there were several videos on YouTube and on line that described the exact same tranny problem I experienced, with the same codes, and step by step pictures of what to do and how. This was a well documented issue with that tranny on that truck, and there were lots of people who had already done the fix in their driveway.

Not so in your case. Take it to a good shop, or better yet, talk to the shops that do Toyota trannies and give them your story. Then decide.

Unless you are a wrencher, and have done a bunch of them, you may wish you hadn't tackled doing it yourself.

[Hoopes999]

I just want to start by saying thank you for the reply. I actually took it to a shop on Friday and the problem did not occur the whole way there nor did it happen when the mechanic took the car for a test drive. I did explain to him that it was only happening when the car warmed up but the car was warm and still not malfunctioning. He randomly had an old odb1 toyota plug in that connected to his scan tool but he said the only reading it was giving is that my battery was low. He told me to get the battery checked and then let him know. Went to auto zone, battery was bad threw a new one in, drove an hr back to work and everything was fine, i go to leave work and the condition is back. So needless to say i will be back at ammco this week. Something really strange is going on and im 99.9% sure its electical in nature. I canged my spark plugs about a month ago and i was attempting to change my coolant temp sensor at the same time, i found out the sensor i ordered did not fit my car but it looked pretty identical to the one i had in their, so out of frustration i tried to force the connector on, really fing stupid to say the least, it didnt work and i had to yank it back off with alot of force, the terminals in the connector seemed to be fine and intact so i just put the old one back in and finished the job. So, last night i was trying some different things, i waited til the solenoids went out and then i popped the hood and just disconnected to ect sensor and then reconnected it, the malfuction went away. Sorry for the rambling, thank you

[Hoopes999]

By the way, I didn't mean it went away for good, I just meant it went away at that point, but it came back this morning. I'm going to start testing the electrical connections at the transmission housing before I open the pan up to directly test the solenoids.