| Hello all. First off, I want to thank all off the contributors and maintainers of TT.net for helping to build such a great resource. Since acquiring my Z, any question I needed to have answered was found with a few searches and by reading a few forum posts or by use of all the great tech pages. I have a stock 1990 twin turbo 2+2 automatic with 98,000 km. It is a Japanese car (right hand drive) that has been imported into Canada. I acquired the car in March, but due to difficulties with lost paperwork, and lazy or clueless government employees I only managed to get it registered 2 weeks ago. Between acquiring the car in March, I had driven it approximately 300 kms on the highway home when driving it home from the company who had imported it for me and sparingly (perhaps another 50 km) around town on temporary registration. The car was running perfect, idling properly and smoothly, boosting and pulling fine, was in excellent shape inside and out and did pass a provincial safety inspection, which is fairly rigorous. The company that imported it for me said it was one of the better Fairlady Z's they had imported. I have performed some of the basic maintenance on it - plugs, fuel filter, oil changed and installed at JWT Pop Charger. Now on to my problem. After finally getting the car registered, I took it out for a 40 minute celebratory cruise around the city. Although I did accelerate at wot a few times, it was only for short durations and in general I kept it quite civil and took it easy on the car. The car was not exhibiting any problems at all and everything was working perfectly as before, including the transmission, which was shifting fine. The next morning I backed the car out of the garage to go to work, and once I began accelerating forward, I noticed a slight "grinding" noise coming from the bottom of the car and the transmission is "slipping" slightly. As I continue to drive forward, accelerating slowly, the slipping continues to get worse until finally, the transmission is completely out of gear as if it is in neutral. Moving the gear selector through the entire range from Park to 1 and back again does nothing, the transmission remains out of gear as if in neutral. However, if I put the car in park, turn it off and start it again, the transmission will go into gear and it is possible to get the car moving again, although the pattern repeats itself, with the slipping continuing until the car is out of gear after about 200 feet of travel and I need to restart it again and repeat the process until I can get it back into the garage. The transmission fluid levels are in spec and according to the stickers under the hood the fluid was changed at 4000 km ago (assuming that this is trustworthy and there are no roll backs). The fluid itself does "look" new in that it has the same bright red as new fluid. However, it definitely has a "burnt" stench to it in comparison to new fluid. I have not drained the fluid out of the pan yet. Both the automatic transmission and ECU diagnostics show no error codes. The service manual doesn't seem to offer any explanation. I know the '90 transmissions are notorious for being faulty. At the moment, I am leaning towards picking up a used JDM transmission from a local importer for approximately $400 and installing it with the aid of some mechanically inclined friends who have all of the proper tools. I don't feel it would be worth my while to have it towed to a shop and pay to have it diagnosed and either have to pay for a small fix, which will still cost me at $100-$120/hr for shop time, or pay bigger money to have an already faulty design rebuilt. So I'm hoping to solicit all of your advice as to what the problem could potentially be and if it is a small fix or problem that wouldn't require me swapping out my transmission, or even if I'm way off base and it isn't my transmission that is at fault. Or, if simply replacing the transmission with a low mileage JDM one like I mentioned would be the best course. Thank you in advance. Coles Notes: -'90 auto transmission slips until it comes out of gear and is like it is neutral.
-Restarting the car will let it go back into gear, but it will slip and come out of gear like before.
-Help!
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22:56:19 07/02/08
