I drive a 09 S40 2.4i with FWD, and the other day the car had bottomed out, causing the transmission oil cooler line to break, and the fluid to empty out. I noticed in time to turn the car off, careful to not wreck the transmission or engine, however I could not save the fluid. I had the car brought back to my house where I replaced the oil cooler line, and refilled it with new fluid. when I went to test drive the car, and as I shifted between the gears, still not yet moving I noticed it would jerk into both drive, and reverse. The first few minutes of the test drive went well, no new sounds, no warning lights. However as soon as the car got almost up to temperature, the transmission would not shift into any gears anymore. I have scoured the internet trying to find a solution, and the best i could come up with is that its an issue with the fluid. But if at all possible, I reaaaaally don't want to take it to the dealer because as a student that can hardly afford gas money, Its hard to afford getting someone else to look at your car, especially when it involves something as time consuming as transmission work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

The only thing that comes to mind here is whether you used the proper transmission fluid. What did you use?

 

How did you measure the correct fluid level? The fluid must reach 80deg for a proper check to be done and car must be running. If you can't be bothered to read the temp, drive it for 20min and then fill to top level.

 

The fluid i used was given to me from canadian tire, they had supposedly looked up exactly what it needed, and given me exactly that. Ill head into town later to find out exactly what they had given me. I measured the fluid level by having the car level, and running while checking, I think it had been running for about 5 minutes, so it didn't fully heat up, i was going to check it again during the test drive for the hot setting, but didn't quite get that far.

 

I've given this some more thought. When you lost the fluid, you probably set a code in the transmission control module for a pressure loss. Given the pressure loss, the transmission may be inhibited from running properly until you clear the code(s).

Have someone see if there are codes in the transmission module. The basic OBD11 scanner probably won't help.

 

Okay great, a buddy of mine has a snapon scanner that ill be sure to try out. i did try my basic OBD11 scanner, and no codes came up so that would make sense