I just bought an 01 Camry with 70K miles. I have driven it for 2000 miles and have noticed 2 things that have caught my attention. The car has now, twice, upon accelerating to 60-70 mph not been able to shift to the next gear. Instead it gets hung up at 55 mph and the RPM's rise to around 4500. On both occasions, I stop the car, put it in park and then go again. On both occasions it acted fine after that.

This symptom coupled with the other symptom is leading me to believe their is something wrong with the transmission. The 2nd symptom is when I'm in stop and go traffic, letting off the gas and then accelerating, the car will shake or vibrate after acceleration. If I let off the gas at 60 mph and it goes to 57ish, and then put the gas back on it, the RPM's go up about 500 and then 'settle' back down about 200-300. When it 'settles' back down is when the vibration occurs.

The good news is I have a 3 month/3000 mile warranty where if there are major issues with the car, it can be fixed for free.

Based on these 2 symptoms, does anyone have any advice? One mechanic told me that it 'must be' normal for this car (I don't believe him). The other mechanic has a 01 Camry and said that it should not be doing that and recommended checking with the Toyota dealer for history of this problem. He also suggested changing the transmission fluid.

 

This is not normal.

Having the transmission fluid completely changed my help, but.

Suggest you take the second mechanics opinion and have the Toyota dealer look at the car. Guessing it might be the torque converter, if so this would be a costly fix.

Thus suggest you act quickly before the warranty expires.

 

Thanks for the advice. It is kind of what my 1st mechanic told me, that he thinks it is just the torque converter. He said he didn't think anything was wrong with it other then it just 'converts' very quickly and that's what causes it to vibrate.

I'm going to take all this info to the dealer and see what they say.