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Well, I'm not sure what my Expedition catrike says about me, but I'm glad I'm on the forum before this issue came up! In Iowa "BMW" stands for BIG MAN WALKING! I guess both types of "BMW's" in Iowa are rare!

1987 Mazda Pickup - original owner - dropping in an engine for another 250K+

1994 Suburban
Hauls lots of stuff for events; Dogs ride in the back, computers ride in the middle.

Rental vehicle when on assignment [or people don't like one of my trucks]

1973 240Z - project

My favorite mode of transportation. No waxing required.

No posting without pictures, lol.

@Easyrider Good idea. Glad you got through the hijaced thread.

@Leslie

Is that Brown Couunty???

No, Jimmie, that is in the coastal mountains of British Columbia.

UGGGHH--I have been away from Indiana too long--I think I see bear grass and way too many conifer trees!!!

jimmie, are you trying to become a Top Poster?

No- but I find this thread more interesting than the usual computer stuff--sorry

Leslie looks like she has a body draped across and is heading into the woods to bury it.....

Steven,

BWAAHAAHAAHAA! Actually I think my pack horse was packing the paniers with the lamb chops and wine.

I had a 1972 240Z in the past.

Wonderful car if the frame rails aren't rusted out, had mine welded at a place that welded flywheel teeth without removing the trans.

I think I still have a Chilton manual if you need one.

" ... police have reported a sudden end to air conditioning units in the tri-state area. Police have no clues as to what has led to such a change in the thief's pattern ..."

Do you have a special Mason Jar of "Apple Pie" Leslie?

Think I still have mine from the first 240Z I had - but I'll check and let you know.

I would appreciate your input as a consulting engineer from time-to-time once I start in; parts are hard to come by, and I'm toying with several 'mods'.

Something you could get a peek at one of our future meet-ups.

Indy,

No mason jar of "Apple Pie" but that pack could just as well be full of cobras. That is what the police officer told us he thought would be the only deterrent to the air-conditioner thefts we experienced three times.

Just know you are a thorough professional, so that might indeed be a body bag headed deep into the wilderness.

This wasn't mine, but I had a blue and silver Datsun 280Z in 1978. To this day, the best car I ever owned. Loaned it to a "friend" and somehow he drained every fluid out of the car, then drove it until it stopped.

Hi jimmie (and anyone else interested in aging vehicles),

Our fleet, and this is written as a father of two college students and one high school student:

1988 Jeep Comanche pickup
1997 Subaru Impreza
2000 Subaru Impreza
2003 Chevy Malibu
2003 Chevy S10 pickup
2005 Chrysler Town and Country minivan

and one story, I'm not sure if this is more interesting than the usual computer stuff.

About a month ago, my wife and I were driving to York, Pennsylvania, to attend my wife's high school reunion. We were in the Chrysler minivan, merging onto I-83, if anyone is familiar with that area, this is a wretched interstate, with a rather high traffic volume. This specific on-ramp was having shoulder work, so concrete barriers shortened the on-ramp and eliminated the shoulder of the highway itself. As I was accelerating to merge into traffic, there was a loud clunk, the vehicle jerked, the engine sped up and the vehicle slowed down. I barely stopped at the very end of the on-ramp, not quite into the traffic lane. The vehicle had no forward motion, no backward motion, and Park would not hold, the vehicle drifted in Park. At first I thought that a CV joint or axle broke, but nothing was obviously hanging under the front end. Any of you automotive types want to venture a guess what happened?

Gene

Gene,

Bert is going to think I am making this stuff up (okay I did get carried away with the patchouli oil and incense--that was tongue in cheek,) but believe it or not as a 4th year med student in the late 80's did a rotation at York Hospital with an ID guy with an Italian name who was nothing short of brilliant, one of the best rotations I ever had in med school.
But, my brother is the auto expert that ran his own garage in West Virginia back in the 80's, and I was the gas pumper, tire changer/balancer, oil checker, window cleaner, and manned the till, but my guess is rear drive shaft joint went out.
I don't remember the exact intersection, but loved the area.

Get this, my second Z was a 1978.

Whereas my first Z was wonderful, that one was, for me, a dog. Fuel injection problems, electrical, this car was down much more than up. Oh yeah, it was a horrid green color (I think repainted) also.

All of the Z's are somewhat similar. Each became heavier, the '72 was the lightest. The '78 was definitely the slowest even when the fuel injection was working because of all the emissions stuff.

Actually the '93 is much more refined and even without a turbo eat's pavement for breakfast. Just couldn't get enough of them. I've sat in the cockpit of the newer 350Z and it is still very reminiscent of the entire series, but is nowhere near as beautiful as the earlier Z's. Not to mention a lot more expensive. Not a lot of sport cars are good daily drivers and can accommodate a 6'2 frame without difficulty.

1)Transmission failed +/- torque converter 2)Broken crankshaft

Wendell,

Refine your differential diagnosis (clue)

I originally thought broken flywheel (flexplate) until I saw the vehicle drift while in Park.

The engine ran fine

No drive, forward or reverse, and Park would not hold vehicle

Broken crank/flywheel/converter should not affect Park.

Gene

jimmie,

Front wheel drive, no rear driveshaft!

Gene

My first thought was spline shaft, but since you have ruled out CV or half shaft, the drifting[movement?] in Park makes me wonder about shift position-er cable/arm.

The engine revving without torque delivered would have me looking at teh tranny/transaxle in general.

Makes me wonder what position does the shift positioner fail to - park?

Indy,

Great thoughts....but....no.

Which spline shaft?

Realize, too, that my initial eval was on an onramp to an interstate highway, about 5 feet from traffic!

Gene

Watch the rise and fall:

1992 Camaro RS

1994 Trans Am

1996 Lingenfelter 383 WS6 Trans Am

2003 Mazda6 (2 door)

2009 Mazda6 (4 door) (current car)

JamesNT

1994 Mercedes SL-500

1997 Mercedes S420

1999 Lincoln Navigator

Is it just me, or do us doctors need to start standing up for ourselves and regain our status and power? Most of us either are not being truthful or sadly (but the truth ) don't make enough money to buy all the fancy cars our last generation did!

The vehicles that folks above choose to drive reflect several factors:
<>Government distortions in the medical marketplace
<>Cultural shift away from achievement to self-esteem that denigrates meritocratic recognition of Doctors because it makes others feel 'bad' (which feeds back into the marketplace)
<>Education inflation that saps earnings for decades
<>Serial bubbles that cause insightful people to conserve funds

I could go on, but the good/bad news is that the current system is unstable and headed for crisis. The system that replaces the current one - that could be scary.

Medical School is ridiculously pricey nowadays with most schools at 80 grand/year or higher.

OK Sorry I missed the beginning but its been a long weekend of kids activities, theater and hockey while great discussion, Down to ONE Car almost out of nowhere a couple of weekends ago. Those who don't know I'm the shadetree mechanic version of Click and Clack with a downstate NY Bronx accent instead of a Baston (Boston) one.... (Red Socks SUX!!! Sorry now that Derek and I share the same dreaded injury and Gay-Rod is too busy flitter with chicks in the stands to give a rats behind about the F'ing Play-offs (AGAIN!!! Tweeeter!) us Yankee fans are a bit grouchy to say the least... A-Rod should have watched "Miracle" with Curt Russell as Team USA's 1980 Gold Medal Coach to learn what happens to athletes who are more concerned about flirting instead of staying focused on the game at hand.... "Craig, Again... Craig Blow the Freakin' Whistle!!" (Brookes) (In a German Accent) "But Herb this is maddness!!!" (Trainer Doctor) "Herb don't you think the boys get the message by now, they can hardly stand?" (Assist Coach Craig Partick) "AGAIN!!! Come on boys up on the goal line. Craig blow that freakin Whistle!!!" "Tweeeeeet" (As the team continues to slog thru another set of "Suicides" Wind Sprints, Stops and Starts...) That's what happens at least if they actually care and want to be champions and their coach is smart enough to know how to get them there that is...

Anyway, I have two completely Different Differential Diagnosis's for your Transaxle which is actually your transmission and your main front differential as it is one larger combined unit on a transverse mounted front wheel driver. So pardon the bad pun but it's too cool to resist here... So we really could refer to this as a Differential's Differential Diagnosis! (Ba dump, Baaaaah (crash) :o)

One: Your Cable theory, ala shift linkage may be sort of half valid but sort of right basic concept but wrong cause... The Clank, bang sort of thing that then lead to pretty much Nothing, be it park, drive or reverse gets me thinking about Dead, unbolted, missing, shreaded Engine, tranny mounts kind of thing. I am going here because you did NOT mention any continous noises or knocks while the car sat there idling away but unable to connect and transfer power thru her own powertrain. Cracked, broken fly wheels and torque converters, flex plates, bolts coming loose, tend to make noise, before during and after.... Many times after a crack or the stuff comes loose you have a deep, almost bad rod bearing kind of heavy parts Knocking down low... I was looking for one of those in the rain at 50 degrees soaking wet under my 2000 4.0 liter in-line six WJ Grand Cherokee while stranded at the US OTC in Lake Placid a couple of weekends ago now... Taking my lifetime certification seminar for Coaching. I'm a level 4 coach with a dead flippin' Jeep !!!!

But to get back to my first possible idea here is this. If your engine was able to get that loose to have one mount fail or come extremely loose, torn up (Solid piece of round rubber, used to be squares back around '72 and back, but they started to use circles with Bolt thru so even if the rubber Failed from stress and or Ozone and Engine Fluid degridation, there would still be this round piece of metal with a full bolt thru it to half hold things up. Also this is a safety feater to even as the rubber fails in a bad front end, head on collision, the mounts are less likely to completely allow the entire engine, tranmission assembly to come backward into and possibly thru the firewall and on to the front seat passenger and driver.... Imagine a 500 lbs small block V-8 sitting in your lap after you were luck enough to survive a head on with a delivery truck... Not good.

So now if you van is cable linkage controlled for its actual throttle body (ala gas pedal) control as well as what we in the Mopar Circles refer to the Throttle, Kick Down linkage, and the shift linkage cable, you now could have as many as three very important control signals and devices that all sort of are designed to work together thru all phases of throttle pressure to help the car keep all three of these things in sync so they all behave nicely whether you're standing still at a light, light part throttle cruising down the blvd, or kicking her down as you did to get into fast merging traffic or passing a large slow truck in a passing zone.... BOOM! Last few pieces of rubber went, last couple of treads on one of a few mounting bolts for that particular mount...

So now you Van can not get into any gear, the tranny does not have any idea where your foot is in terms of how deep, hard into the pedal for shift points and the like. And you many or may not have much or any control over your throttle, engine speed. I get the feeling that all seems in the driver's seat to sort of work, but no response. I mean that you can throttle the throttle, gas pedal, you can shift the shifter and the like but NO response as though you are doing such especially the shifter to get in and out of all the gears and park position. This could have Busted off the cable from its bell crank assembly which is basically a modest few inches long lever with a bike brake like cable going to it, with a tear drop shaped plastic clip that pops on and off of a short post with a round ball on it that allows the wire to actuate the tranny thru all its positions and yet does not bind up because this ball and clip set up allows it to smoothly move in an arc like pattern. sort of like a trailer hitch. Same thing with the throttle if it is still a wired throttle instead of the newest "Fly By Wire" like throttles...

So blown or almost gone motor, tranny mount is possibility #1.

2) That last loud clunk Bang you heard was the last legs on something inside your tranny itself, that allows it to auto shift and move thru it's "Gears", ala the main input, output, main drum, a band or two, or an entire set of clutch packs that ride and firm up according to the inputs from the forementioned throttle lever, kickdown linkage that speaks to your tranny about how far down into the gas pedal you are... DO you want to cruise, get a good Kick Down from drive to lets say 3rd or 2nd gear to pass, climb and the like.... This is a good time and place for such things to fail because this is exactly when they are spinning fast at the crank, slower at the output, wheels, the motor is winding up, perhaps in her better part of the her torque band, power range and everything is loosening up and coming back together, and in general getting pushed around under higher loads and demands. Clutch packs, bands, and the like...

I'm just not sure that this would take out your "Park" position though unless there is no longer any direct connection from other solid spinning parts, output to the drive wheels back to the main "Sprag" or whatever it is they call it. There is a large, very old fashioned looking "Gear Cog" thing attached to the main drive output near the tail of rear wheel drive cars and trucks that a large rod, lever engages to literally hold the rear driveshaft from spinning or moving and that is what is engaged when you put your vehicle in park position to hold it in place. Great Reason to use your "E" Brake on hills and other inclines or places where letting go is NOT an option.

So if unless there was a good internal drive failure and that could take out the parking sprag and engagement rod part of a front driver which is where my knowledge gets a bit shakey, I'm gonna say I believe that your have a pretty bad, loose, even half gone motor mount, which again failed while under stress in the in demand all the time direct which makes sense, as this is how motor mounts tend to fail, in the direction of power, demand rotation. Pretty much the same idea, if your chassis has a rear tranny cross member like pick point, or some other body to frame to motor Pick Point, the bang could have been that connect the mount mount to the body frame like place and again now your drive train in out of wack and the inputs you are able to do are not anywhere near where they need to be to make anything happen, cables could be bound up, shear off or cut, so on and so forth....

Can you at least press down on the gas and make the engine change speed normally like revving the engine? If you place the shift selector into any position does it seem to do that "engaged" thing regardless of whether or not your shifter is in the wrong place for such a thing? If You can get it to engage in any position, I would say open the hood and with foot firmly on the brake, "E" Brake on kind of thing (you don't want to move) Put it into any gear possible and see if the engine starts to move A LOT, like Comes UP and OUT of the Engine bay because it is not Securely held in place enough. When not so far gone as you still can shift around, and get proper engagement of forward gears, we do this as a test on rear drivers and some front drivers, too, looking for excessive Movement, engine RISE in the direction of engine stress and stain against the motor mount that is attempting to sheer it off in an upward direction, passenger side I believe. The mounts on the downward force side don't tend to get a beat up because in general they are in a "Compression" like state most of the time when the engine is flexing its muscles where as the UP side is being pulled apart and sheared more. To some extent this was half eliminated by the modern, crash safer mounts that are very resistant to catistrophic failure the way the old sandwich flat, sqaure mounts where....

I would love to hear how this all plays out and what the final answer is.... Good Luck and hopefully you only need an engine mount of two, some loc-tite and perhaps a clip or shift cable and the like....

Paul

Hi Paul, Indy, Wendell, and jimmie, (everyone else skip this),

Excellent guesses, jimmie was actually closest when he said broken rear driveshaft, except that there is no rear driveshaft. Paul included it in his extensive list. The "Differential" was an intentional clue.

The transaxle has a transmission section, and a differential section. The output shaft takes the power output from the transmission, and brings it into the differential. This shaft is 11" long, about 1 1/8" diameter.

This output shaft sheared. Cleanly. Where the splined section meets the rest of the shaft. This was a 1 piece shaft, not welded or joined. This was as clean a shear as if it were band sawed.

So that explains running well one moment, and totally dead the next.

I've been working on vehicles for over 40 years, and this is about the strangest thing I have seen.

So now the next question. 125 K miles on the van, well maintained, I change the transmission fluid regularly.

What do you do now? Remanufactured transaxle, have Aamco rebuild it and replace broken shaft, or just replace broken shaft?

Gene

Gene--I am stuck in the 70-80's totally spaced out the fact the minivan would not have a rear drive shaft!!!!
If cost is favorable would remanufacture transaxle--but make sure it is not the "rear transaxle"

To help with repair, what are the costs of your options? It would be fun to have a metallurgist look at the sheared part, sort of like sending tissue specimen to pathologist

Gene,

I was trying to be funny above, but transaxle probably not under warranty with 125k but with the shearing effect wonder about pieces of metal and may be a reason to have transaxle rebuilt and replace broken shaft, and if you did maybe Aamco would put a warranty on the transaxle and shaft??? disclaimer--I was only a grease monkey and not an auto mechanic

Well, go back to Paul's commentary. If you had a bad motor mount and it changed the angles it could have introduced abnormal pressures resulting in the failure.

Funny you should mention this. Until January my wife had a 2002 Honda Odyssey. Apparently they have had transmission problems for years. While Honda's are good cars, clearly they should have done more with this one. I personally know 3 people with similar vintage Odyssey's with blown trans'. Google it and find a lot of problems.

Our first trans went out in 2010. Dealer wanted $5K we found another shop to do it for $2.4K. The car had about 135K on it at the time. 14 months later (of course it had a 12 month warranty) transmission goes out again. Since the aftermarket trans failed and the Honda dealer only offered a 12 month guaranty, we had to break down and buy a new one. We really were not ready to buy another car. We truly expected to get several more years out of that one, but then other age related problems were beginning to surface. The money we put on the trans equated about to $200 per month note.

Soo..... I your car is in otherwise good shape, and the cost is reasonable (I suspect that a Chryco trans will be less than a Honda with known problems) it may well be worth dropping a couple grand on one. Your alternative is to drop 10-15 times as much money on a new one. Now as to whether replace the output shaft, buy reman or have AAMCO do it - time is money but working on cars can be fun. If you have the time, I would probably put a reman in there. While the shaft clearly died, the rest of the trans should probably be overhauled because there may well be parts that are wearing after 125K. Since the biggest expense is pulling the trans/replacing it, get it tip top before putting it back. As to you vs AAMCO, time vs enjoyment vs money can be the guide.