My dad has a 2000 Town and Country with the 3.8 motor. Has 130,000 miles. He was driving it on a long road trip from New Orleans to Baltimore. About 700 miles into the trip he said the van started sputtering like it was starving for fuel. He pulled into a nearby firestone where they changed the fuel filter. He continued on with the trip and drove to Baltimore about another 400 miles and then another 600 mile or so driving around town while he was there without any issues.

Coming back to New Orleans about 500 miles into the trip around Chattanooga, Tn he said it started sputtering just as it was before. He said this time though it was so bad he could barely get the car pulled over into a parking lot. He had it transported back home. He said he never did get a service engine soon.

Using my Snap On scan tool. I ran the regular codes for engine and came back with P0700 as a general Transmission error code from the 1 trip code option.

Using the Transmission option on the scan tool and getting specific error codes here is what it came back with:

P1791 Loss of Prime
P1784 LR Pressure Switch Circuit
P1782 2-4 Pressure Switch Circuit
P0732 Gear Ratio Error in Second

Mind you all these codes were running it a good bit after initial signs of trouble and it was having a lot of trouble and had to horse it into the parking lot.

I cleared the codes and it was able to take off up and down the street a higher rates of speeds but we didnt take it further than 300 feet or so bc we didnt want to have trouble too far away from the house ( No one to help push it back). When getting it back to the house after clearing the codes a constant noise can be heard coming from the tranny that is a clicking noise almost sounding like the last piece of ice slamming around a blender. I think the noise only happens in gear but I am not 100% sure.

Any ideas?

 

I received a CVI values of

LR Clutch CVI 48
OD Clutch CVI 115
2-4 Clutch CVI 42
UD Clutch CVI 49

This was with motor off and ignition on just after I cleared the codes and took it for a drive up and down the street. Not sure how these values are supposed to be obtained or what is normal for them?

 

he cvis look fine the loss of prime is what I would look at aka low fluid would cause this or a front pump going out usual hear a whine when the pump is going out.

 

My dad said he had the fluid checked and has been checking it himself and it has never appeared low at any point. He said at one time he did hear the pump whining when he was struggling to pull it over. Going through the hills of Tennessee seems to have triggered or strained the tranny each time to start this. The whining went away as did all the other codes and with just the little bit of driving up and down the street it did not trigger the codes again. Even without the codes showing up there is a clanking noise coming from tranny that sounds like a nut or bolt rolling around. The last chunk of ice in the blender is the similar noise. As soon as time permits I am going to drop the pan and take a look.