Hello all. I have an automatic transmission problem with my 2007 PT cruiser non-turbo and was hoping someone here may have some insight.
My wife and I recently discovered that there was an oil leak and after taking it to a local shop that was highly recommended to us by our regular oil change and tire shop, we had a new oil pan and valve cover gasket installed. It was picked up yesterday morning and ran fine although when first started a puff of white smoke came out of the tailpipe. The shop told us that was normal and should clear up in a couple of days. Ok so far.
This morning as my wife was driving into work she stopped at a stop sign after driving for several miles (and stopping at a couple of stop signs before this one)and when she went to pull through the intersection it wouldn't move. She put it in reverse and tried it and still no movement. When I arrived on the scene I tried it in drive, reverse, 1st and 2nd gears and no movement. I put it in neutral and tried to push it off the road and it wouldn't budge. The car was able to roll in neutral when the engine was shut off. We had it towed back to the garage that did the gasket work and after several hours of waiting was told that his transmission guy thinks that it's the planetary gear. I've been reading alot of forums and reports and the possibilities are all over the place so I'm hoping have better luck here.
Hopefully you haven't had the same problem but if you have, know someone who had, or are a tech that did a similar repair,what was the problem and how was it fixed? Any help or advice would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance

 

Modern transmissions are controlled by a computer. When they have problems, error codes will almost invariably be set in the computer. The first thing a competent transmission shop will do when diagnosing a transmission is hook up a sophisticated code reader (not any code reader will do) and read the transmission fault codes. If the guy just pulls some guess out of thin air, he doesn't know what he's doing. Take it somewhere else.

 

Best advice i have heard in a while. do what he says.