I have a 97 maxima gle with 187,000 miles on it. I am starting to get hard shifts/slips from 1st to 2nd gear. It all depends on how hard I hit the gas. If you slam the gas it will slip, if you ease the gas, it will shift hard. It also feels like the OD gear has a hard time staying in gear and when you let off the gas, the car slightly jolts. You only really notice this if you pay attension.

I didnt flush, but changed the filter and fluid some time back. Was like a year ago. It's been doing the 1st to 2nd even before the change. Its getting slightly worse.

Does this sound like bad bands/rebuild time? It has been some years since I did any tranny work, so the question is:

How hard is a rebuild? How reliable is the rebuild?

i cant help you out but i would also like to know how hard is it to rebuild since my maxima just hit 250k couple days ago.

The funny thing is this...I took it to a shop just to see what they would say, and they said everything was fine...? When I left their place, it did shift right, but then a couple days later, back to how it has been.

What could that mean? I know he said they scanned for cel codes and checked the fluid level and color, then test drove it. What could have caused it to start shifting right as soon as they had it?

That is the question that is eating at me now.

Welcome to NICO!

I'm guessing that when you did the fluid/filter change you cleaned out the metal shavings in the pan. If you did not, do another service and make sure you clean that pan out real well. If you did clean it, I would recommend one of two things: 1 do another service and substitute one quart of ATF for a synthetic additive, or 2 drain some fluid, add the synthetic additive, then top it back off with ATF.

If your CEL is not on, then more than likely the trans is still good. If it was bad you would have a code stating one or more of the gear ratios were insufficient.

Oh ya I always clean the pan. I even added a quart of Lucas Oil Transmission Stabilizer. No CEL. Only one it had was for the rear O2 a while back, but that was fixed with a new sensor.

I was playing more today, had decided to do a minor tuneup of the motor. Just cleaned the throttle body and put a can of bg44k in the tank.

Prior to starting work on it, I tried a few things on the highway. I got up to 65mph normal accel, then floored it to see what it did. The transmission seemed to have an issue shifting down from OD to 4 then felt sluggish as 4 engaged.

So the question is this...will the cel come on if the clutches or bands are bad? Someone else did mention valve body...

So today, was looking again at all things Maxima and saw an article about the drop resistor. When the car is going from a stopping motion (Like I am about to stop at the light, but it goes green so I hit the gas) is when you really can feel the tranny struggle. It acts like it wants to slowly shift, but then just slams into gear.

I had noticed yesterday, while doing normal maintnance, that the drop resistor looked rusty. Didn't know it was that resistor then.

Could this be causing the erratic and un-predictable shifts?

This kinda problem eats at me. Shoulda stayed with 5-spd manual.