Burned up 2nd and 3rd gears in Autostick tranny.

[Rainman]

2 fridays ago I noticed a "belt sounding" noise coming from my car. It reminded me of the sound a supercharger makes when it is winding up. Anyhow, I took it into the shop. They thought it was the turbo initially and then realized it was the tranny. Based off the sound, they felt it was the differential. But since they had it is the shop so long, they ordered everything they would need to rebuild the tranny if necessary. Anyhow, to make a long story short, they opened it up and found my 2nd and 3rd gears were burned up also. They have essentially rebuilt my tranny and are just waiting on a new torque converter which should be in tomorrow. The car only has 25,000 miles. Does anyone know why this might have happened? I did have the "broken transmission cooler lines" problem. They broke twice before they fixed them. The car got to the shop pretty low on tranny fluid, but not empty. I don't push the car hard at all and 95% of the miles are highway miles. Please help!! Did I break my car or is it just a fluke tranny? The dealership doesn't seem to think it is something I did. Please let me know if anyone has had a similar problem.

[PTGT Redman]

I had a burned out 2nd to 3rd synchronizer on my 01 at 4000miles. Fluke I'd guess.

[NUTLB]

I have had no issues with my Auto-stick. 21,000 miles and still going.

[Mike-in-Orange]

I put 49k miles on a 2000 Stratus ES V-6 with the autostick. I used the "stick" quite a bit and pushed it reasonably hard a good bit of the time but never had a problem. If you had the broken transmission lines issue twice in the past, and you were pretty low on fluid when you brought the car in this time, there might have been enough stress (apparently so!) on things to cause the failure. I'd call it a fluke, but to me the bottom line is this: If the dealer says you didn't do anything wrong then your warranty is covering it, right? If the dealer fixes it right you probably won't have the problem again. I wouldn't worry too much.

[Kirby]

My transmission has been making that same sound of late, hope that it isn't the same thing....I can't give the car up for weeks at a time.

[Rainman]

Well, I got the PT back and it is running better than ever. While it was in the shop, they also replaced the PCM for me (5200 RPM miss TSB). All work was covered under warranty and I had no problems with the dealership concerning the warranty. It is too bad it took them 2 weeks, but they did a superb job and kept me up to date with everything that was happening. Oh, and a bonus is I got to see a convertible while I was in there picking up my car. It was an Almond GT with an autostick. It sure looked nice. They are asking 3000 over MSRP. Anyhow, thanks for all the responses and help. Hopefully the PT's problems are over.

[quicksilverdon]

So glad to hear it went well. If dealer said they didn't think it was anything you did, then they knew it was related to cooler lines they should've fixed. Only problems I've heard of is leaking/bad solenoid packs.