Hi folks, new to the forum.

I've been driving my 98 Camry for the past 6 years. It gets regular maintenance, I do 99% of all work myself.

Interesting thing just happened this evening. Has had no symptoms prior, trans works normally. It shifts a bit firm sometimes, but has for the past few years, and at 230K I argue it shifts great!

I pulled out of the driveway last night, drove about 4 blocks completely fine, stopping at each. The last stop sign before entering the main road It felt like the transmission went into neutral. I immediately looked down to see if I had accidentally bumped the shift lever...nope.

When I accelerated, it revved up to 1500 / 1600 before i felt the trans begin to engage. I crossed the road and pulled onto the shoulder. I tried all gear positions, including reverse, and same effect - it would rev high before I began to move. I shut the car off, restarted it. Same problem.

I decided to nurse it back home, once it was moving it seemed to shift ok through the remaining gears...perhaps a little later than usual. Once back home, I stopped in the street in front of my house - it is level, left the car running and went and pulled the dipstick expecting the fluid to be low. It WASN'T! The level was perfect, no unusual smells - good fluid. The fluid only has about 25k on it right now anyway, and I replaced the filter at that time as well. So much for a simple fix.

The oddity - I got it back into the driveway - and just for fun, tested it this morning. It drove perfectly normally. I went ahead and drove to work to see if any other problems showed up. None in 28 miles.

Now my concern is if something is wrong, I don't really trust the car anymore. I don't want it to go completely into neutral one day, especially in traffic. I would fix it, but I don't know what to fix. So if anyone has any idea or if this is a common Camry thing- please do share your experience!

Thanks
James

 

If you have checked everything external on the trans could be a bad one-way clutch on the torque converter, shift valve, overdrive clutch or brake or a few other things.

All require taking the trans out, everything except the one-way clutch requires taken the trans apart.

Guessing a bad one-way clutch as this is most common.