GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

Been watching my fuel milage, and it has been less than what I thought it would be, and it has varied greatly from tank to tank. Several days ago, I was going down the bypass, and the tach was reading about 5k....at 55....not good....it would NOT shift into 4th (or OD, not sure which). This morning, I was coming down the road, and the RPM's were about 1200, at 45, while accellerating (SLOWLY)....One of the techs here and I discussed it, and it sounds like either the OD Solenoid, or the 3-4:4-3 shift solenoid is stuck, sticking, and intermettintly bad. Has anyone else noticed a situation like this?

There are five selonoids...The bad news is all five are under the trans pan. You must drain the fluid, then drop the pan to access them. A faulty selonoid would be a good suspect. I would also not rule out line pressure being off or a faulty valve body.

This may be a dumb question, but the car was warmed up right?As we all know, it won't shift into 4th or OD until the temp gauge shows the needle past the second red/orange bar to protect the engine.Also it will not go past 5000 RPM until that point also. I'm sure it was but I just had to ask.

Huh, you may have hit on something....the no upshift was this morning, no warmup, outside temp about 40 degrees. BUT, the no downshift was with a warm car....I'm considering doing a transmission flush (I'm at 49K miles anyway), just to see if it gets better.

I believe pmh013 had similar symptoms and it turned out to be a problem with the cat converter...

Either I'm onto something or I'm on something! Not sure which.

Quote, originally posted by ragingfish »I believe pmh013 had similar symptoms and it turned out to be a problem with the cat converter...The symptoms don't sound the same though. My revs never went as high as 5000, so I'm guessing you were in 2nd, trying for 3rd, at freeway speeds. And my car would shift up & down spontaneously (or so it seemed), not get stuck in one gear.