Hello, I recently bought a 70' Skylark. Car is solid but when I was test driving it, I put the car into drive and I felt the car jerk forward. The same happens when putting it in reverse, the car jerks. The guy says it's probably because of low transmission fluid, so he filled it up and 10 minutes later, same thing, car keeps jerking when shifting into drive/reverse. The car was garaged most it's life and I'm not expecting a brand new working transmission, but I'm wondering what could be the problem? Any help is appreciated and thank you for reading.
It didn't sound like it was idling too high, I'm sure I would've noticed, but I'll double check the RPM's and I'll look into the motor mounts as well.
It could have a shift improver kit. Before I had mine installed it kinda mushed into gear now it engages solidly forward and reverse. Cliff
Is there any noise when it jerks? The most common reason is the engine is idling too high. If the universal joints are sloppy, that will do it as well, but you would also hear a clank as well.
How does it shift when you drive it? I would rather have a trans. engage into gear quickly rather than sloooowly fall into gear, this goes for driving, or going from park to drive, or reverse. A higher stall convertor will absorb quite a bit of shock/torque loading at idle and during gear changes, even with a shift kit. The trans. will still shift firmly, you just wont "feel" it as much with a higher stall convertor. A stock/tighter convertor will do just the opposite.
If the tranny shifts from 1st to 2nd and 2nd to 3rd and "bangs", it appears u may have a shifter kit in the tranny which is actually good.
I had a GS 350 car that it started doing the same thing. It would free rev to about 1,100 rpm then bang into 1st. Turned out being a cracked flexplate. Drove it like that (was about 17 at the time) cause it was fun till it finally wouldn't go into gear. My thought was the converter would disengage the pump because after pulling the trans and finding the cracked flexplate I also found the oil pump tangs broken as well.
