Well, on the way to work this morning, I lost all attempts at forward propulsion. I was tooling down the freeway @ ~70 mph, then all of a sudden, engine free revs, but no go! I tried down shifting, and all gears the same. I did not hear anything (other than the engine revving) when this happened. I was able to coast off the roadway and use the E-brake to keep the vehicle in place, as "Park" no longer had an effect. Any Ideas on what to check for?

 

It is strange that moving the shifter into Park has no effect. Double check that the shifter cable is attached. If you get good detents between shifting gears, then you have to assume that the connection is there and that something let loose internally.

Could be a lot of things, but I'd start with the shifter cable and connections first.

 

The symptoms make it clear that the final drive suddenly failed. You have broken a hard part, and it's possible that it's an axle, which would be easy to get to. You can just look at that situation with the ol' Mark I eyeball.


Since it was quiet, if it's internal to the transmission I would be interested to know what it was. I would expect all sorts of noise if a transaxle differential started to break apart.

 

My thoughts too - I just check the ATX dipstick, and there's fluid up to level in there and it doesn't smell burnt or anything out of the ordinary. I had a half-shaft CV joint go on a Mazda once, but it had posi, so was able to limp it home. If this has a typical limited-slip diff, if one shaft isn't connected, could it freewheel like this?

 

Not really, but I wouldn't let that stop me from looking at the axles with my eye.

I would be shocked if anything in that transmission broke and then it was just quiet and smooth and everybody spinning like mad so quietly. The spider gear cross shaft is positioned to act like a shear pin, but if it breaks, you'd have a huge mess.


You are not the first person who posted this. Somebody else did, same symptoms, and they were trying things like disconnecting the battery, like cars are all just magic. Then they quietly went away, I think. If they ever posted the real problem I missed it.

 

Battery - LOL that's a good one. Sounds like someone was busy tweeting Paris Hilton or some other online goofball while they should have been learning about basic automotive technology.......

I had to work the rest of the day and it's starting to rain outside now, so I'll drive my trusty E39 Bimmer to work tomorrow and look at this later this week as soon as I get the chance.

 

I got all curious about this and found the original thread. Never came back. In the whole internet I couldn't find a case of an internal transmission failure that killed the final drive on one of these transmissions, but of course very few people would ever find out what's wrong with one.

 

The only thing that I can think of that will fail a final drive like that is total loss of fluid pressure or the clutch assembly suddenly failing. You could also have some type of electrical issue where the solenoid that controls the fluid pressure is dead.

 

Update:

The coupling that the half-shaft to the body of the trans went and the spline was no longer making contact, thus no go! Got it replaced and she works fine now.

 

You were the first person to actually reply back. 3 people have posted here that they lost park (mechanically) and I always wondered what the real problem was.

Was this something you could fix without getting into the transmission? The word "coupling" doesn't really mean anything automotive to me.

 

Unless he's talking about the drive axle popping out of the end of the transmission.

 

 

We haven't heard from the OP for more than a month. From the limited information given, I have no idea what happened. If the OP doesn't want to fill us in, I guess this whole post is moot.