Well I've had an interesting night thanks to the wonderful folks at the dodge factory. For absolutely no reason at all while driving my sister's 2003 neon w/60000 miles the auto trans locks up on the highway. Any insight on to what causes that? I just got home and its dark out so I'd like to have an idea what I'm looking at to fix this **** box.
I was thinkin the tq. conveter locked up in what ever gear it was in but if it were to lock in a gear wouldnt it stall out when i put it in drive.... the car idles fine in all gears but also will not move in any gear even neutral. I was driving along and a CEL came on by the time i looked over at my buddy to say WTF the wheels locked and chirpped the tires. at 60mph..spun freely and locked again after that I threw it into neutral, braked into a parking lot and while rolling in neutral at lik 20 mph the wheels locked and never unlocked.

any ideas on what the toilet neon needs are much appreciated
-chris

 

Did someone rebuild that transmission? Was it low on fluid?

The impeller and turbine do not contact each other directly, only a fluid coupling drives the transmission, There is no way they can seize because they are splined/affixed to either the torque converter cover inside the unit, or the turbine shaft, which drives the transmission so they are effectively "seized" as part of normal operation. The only part that could seize/fail in the torque converter would be the stator. If the stator seizes it will be hard to maintain high speed, if it fails and freewheels both ways, it will cause very poor take off acceleration.

I would bet that one of your sprags/one way clutches in the transmission seized up, and instead of freewheeling one direction and locking in the other, it is locking in both directions.

Most automatics leave the input clutch on in 2nd gear and the 3rd clutch on in fourth gear to reduce slippage if the transmission were to quickly downshift, since they overrun in thier next higher respective gear, it also serves to identify problems like this.

If this be the case, you will need new one way clutches/sprags at least, and perhaps clutch plates if the force was so great it caused the clutches to slip, and burn them up. I would not expect too much more than that, shouldn't be too much for those parts.