I have a 2004 1.6 Ghia Automatic, 135,000 miles. Had it for three years and have addressed most of the "common" faults on it, so new droplinks, fan blower, coil pack and ignition leads, a window regulator, both front lower control arms and one front spring, one rear suspension arm, new exhaust, new brakes, two new wheel bearings, and some other bits. So a lot of time and effort (and money) to keep it running. It just passed its MOT with only advisories on a dim headlight glass and rusty seatbelt links. So there's a lot left in it.

However, a while ago it started behaving oddly when driving slowly. When shifting between first and second it would go into limp mode, and I had to restart it to reset it. No fault showing when I took it to the garage, could have been their reader. After a lot of reading, I thought it might be the valve body, so I replaced that along with the wiring loom. For a while it ran smooth as anything, really better than ever. Only issue was the tripmeter kept resetting itself, which I thought might be damp as I didn't drive the car much for a few weeks. But now the gearbox issue is back.

Any further suggestions? Transmission speed sensor? Something more serious in the gearbox? It doesn't happen every time, although sometimes you get a slightly heavy gearshift.

Any help is much appreciated.

Hi,

You say you changed the valve body, did that include all the solenoids?

Did you fully flush and replace the fluid and the filter?

Yes, if the speed sensor is playing up, the transmission won't know what gear to go in

18 minutes ago, DaveT70 said:

Hi,

You say you changed the valve body, did that include all the solenoids?

Did you fully flush and replace the fluid and the filter?

Yes, if the speed sensor is playing up, the transmission won't know what gear to go in

I didn't do it myself but the fluid and filter was changed, or so they told me. It included the solenoid pack as well. They had to drain it twice because one of the "new" solenoids wasn't working, think it was D so no 4th gear. 

Would a speed sensor at low speed get itself confused?

7 minutes ago, NikToo said:

Would a speed sensor at low speed get itself confused?

Possibly. On the manuals the speed sensor used to play up on MK1s, but I'm not sure if autos were different.

If it has a speed sensor on the transmission I would suspect that first.

Could be a faulty throttle body or even a faulty cluster too

Today I started no problems, tripmeter was still showing yesterday's reading. It quickly reset itself and stayed at zero. After going a few hundred yards the speedometer stopped working but the car still ran ok, even shifting gears. 

Still looking like a speed sensor?

On 10/28/2023 at 2:54 PM, NikToo said:

Today I started no problems, tripmeter was still showing yesterday's reading. It quickly reset itself and stayed at zero. After going a few hundred yards the speedometer stopped working but the car still ran ok, even shifting gears. 

Still looking like a speed sensor?

Sorry for late reply,

Yes, if the speedo is dropping then suspect the speed sensor.

If the speed sensor isn't working this will cause issues with the transmission