91 Navajo stalling when put in gear

[iammike]

I've had to have my Navajo towed home twice in the last month. Each time I had stalled at a traffic light. I could restart the engine fine, but when putting it in gear it would lurch a foot or two and then stall. It's a 91 with automatic transmission and about 90000 miles. If I jacked up the rear end, I could put it in gear as long as the brake was not on. I was able to get it running the first time by changing the transmission fluid. I don't think it had ever been changed before, and was a nasty brown color when I drained it. After changing it I ran it through the gears with the rear end jacked up and everything appeared fine. I drove it for about a week and put about 100 miles on it and then without warning the same stalling problem happened again. I changed the transmission fluid again, and its now its driveable once again. I know that you only get around half or so of the fluid with each change, so I suppose that there may have still been enough crud in there after the first change to cause the problem. But I don't really want to go through this process again and have it die in another week. I'm also giving serious consideration to selling it, and want to be honest with potential buyers. Could changing the fluid again have solved the problem or am I just bandaiding a much more serious issue? Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MrShorty]

Sounds to me like the torque convert clutch is sticking. Usually this is caused by crud in the valve body. If you're doing the work yourself, next time try dropping and cleaning the valve body, too. There are a couple of pretty good threads here that deal with "rebuild"ing/cleaning the valve body in the A4LD (search for "A4LD valve body rebuild" or similar).

 

[iammike]

Sounds to me like the torque convert clutch is sticking. Usually this is caused by crud in the valve body. If you're doing the work yourself, next time try dropping and cleaning the valve body, too. There are a couple of pretty good threads here that deal with "rebuild"ing/cleaning the valve body in the A4LD (search for "A4LD valve body rebuild" or similar).

Thanks for the quick reply. I've done some further reading and have another question. I read where some folks were disconnecting a 3-wire connector on the side of the tranny to keep the torque converter from locking. If I disconnect that or just keep it out of overdrive with the gear selector, should it be reasonably safe to drive until I get time to clean the valve body?

 

[MrShorty]

TCC can lockup in either 3rd or 4th gear, so just keeping the selector in D instead of OD won't help. You can just unplug the 3-4 shift/TCC lockup connector at the transmission without hurting the transmission.