chippmom

Hey, everyone - I took it to the transmission place today..... he drove the car and said it was okay, just a little slow in shifting. Then he did his test with his hand-held machine and no codes came up. He suggested we make sure it's not engine-related. He said a sluggish engine can make the acceleration slow. I found that when I drove it over to the shop, it was fine. It was only acting up when I first started the engine and initially took off. The tranny guy said to bring it over one evening and then he'll drive it in the morning when it's cold to emulate what we're experiencing to make sure it's not engine-related, instead of tranny related. The car does have maintenance needs - it needs a tune up and the timing belt has never been changed and all the hoses are original. I went and got the oil changed on the way home - put synthetic oil in because I heard it's better for high-mileage vehicles. They checked the tranny fluid and he said it was okay, not sure what that meant. When my husband gets home from work, I think we'll check it out. Thanks for all your input. I'm going to make this forum a regular stop.

No problem! I'm taking the car in today and I'll post the results here. Just in case anyone else is curious! Good luck with your project! wow, $900, and we thought we got a good deal at $3995 for a 96 ES 300 with 171K miles! Although our car is beautiful - an older guy drove it and was meticulous. Our mechanic did say it was driven with care. Hopefully we won't have to spend a lot of money on the transmission.! :cries:

Thanks for the great advice. The car is a 96 not a 98. Anyway, the fluid was changed in October of 2005 by the previous owner - we have all the receipts. He also did it another time, a year or two before that. So I would assume the fluid is okay, but can we check it just by pulling out the dipstick? In my son's defense, we only bought the car two weeks ago, so my son hasn't been driving it much like this. And he didn't know what was going on with it, and that's why we took it to our mechanic just last Friday. The mechanic did check the cable and he said it was fine.

According to my son, it does it all the time, although he doesn't drive much distance - 2 miles to school and back, 3-4 miles to and from his girlfriend's house. When my husband drove it, he didn't see the problem.... but our mechanic says it's slipping from 1st to 3rd gear. I'm taking it into a highly recommended transmission place tomorrow, so I'll post his findings. I'm definitely going to get the timing belt changed - I can't believe it hasn't been changed! Our mechanic said the bolts don't look like they've ever been removed, so he's assuming it hasn't been changed.

My husband and I just bought a 1996 ES 300 for our 18 year old son. It looks beautiful, inside and out it ooks nearly new, but it does have 171,000 miles. When we test drove it, we didn't detect any problems. But after a few days of owning it, the RPMs would go way up in low gear and hesitate going into a higher gear - my son would give it more gas and finally it will go faster. It often sticks between 20-35 mph with the RPM indicator going way up. We had our mechanic look at it and he couldn't find anything engine-related that would cause this. He feels it's slipping right past second gear, going from 1st to 3rd. He suggested we take it to a transmission specialist. We did find out from the previous owner who traded it into a dealership and we bought it wholesale, that he did nothing to the car other than oil changes and a few other minor things. Evidently, he didn't have the timing belt changed, no tune ups (although our mechanic said it had to have something done tune-up wise), etc. Our mechanic did say all the hoses are original. We definitely have some maintenance issues to deal with, but I just wondered if anyone had some insight into the transmission issue. Thanks!