Good evening,

I have a 2004 ion 2 2.2L with a VTi transmission. Needed to replace transmiss fluid. Drained and replaced with Castrol atf/cvt transmax as that was recommended by autozone. Since flush and change of fluid, I am now getting a message on the dash for trans hot. Shifting is sometimes good, sometimes bad. Sometimes rpms will spike or car will seemingly try to move while stopped at a red light. I have now found information that these VTi transmissions should only use GM acdelco cvt fluid. Is that what could be causing it to show hot? I do need to mention that it shows the trans hot message AS soon as I start the car. May be a temperature sensor? I could not change the filter as it takes 2 weeks to come in.

 

Sounds to me like you got some bad advice from Autozone. I have ZERO knowledge about the trans in your Relay, so I don't know what type of fluid is recommended. What you need to know is to NEVER take advice from an auto parts store employee unless you know that they've worked on cars. That's another reason I quit working for Autozone back in the 90's after 5 years of watching them hire people that don't know ANYTHING about working on cars.

 

How many miles do you have on it?

Never take advice from someone who doesn't know your vehicle nor anything about it.

Get whatever **** you have in there out and put the ACDelco fluid in. It's probably crazy expensive since all the other CVT Saturns are long since dead, but it is also the only fluid or one of a few likely to keep your vehicle on the road.

Slipping is bad news on those VTIs. Remedy this ASAP.
All the maintenance you have done to keep it alive may be for naught if you don't.

 

Technically I don't know anything about your vehicle either, so I'll have to rethink that statement........

 

Yeah I was inclined to not use it either but we couldn’t get the real stuff and it was going to take 2 weeks to get it from Tennessee from GM . I called Castro about it Saturday and a employee verified it was able to be used for this vehicle and it meets or exceed the requirements in every facets the car is in really good shape and has 100k miles just over it’s been very reliable since we have bought it 6?months ago it all started when my son flattened a tire by hitting a set of keys on the highway and I helped him repair the tire then he said his front end hobbled and it was another tire that also got a piece of the keys but no flat it went between the rubber and the belt and formed a bubble so I got him a new tire and he told me he wanted to check trannny fluid and can’t find a dip stick? Finally we found out it’s hidden in the transmission and when I saw it it was so black and weak I said it has got to be done and then the nightmare started!!! I can’t believe that you can’t by parts anywhere? Except 2weeks out from them ? I would like to when change the TTS when the filter comes and hopefully I will figure it out! Lmao, honestly until this car I’ve always been able to help all my children with their vehicles and get everything needed with no problem, not sure why you can’t get parts? The bankruptcy process for them had to stipulate carrying parts for the cars sold already and it can’t be acceptable as it exists!! Another thing I did last night was take about a quart of fluid from the transmission because it was done cold I missed it but it is correct now and I’m going to try to test drive it today and see if it becomes drivable now until the parts come. There alot of life in the car and he should be able to use it for a while?

 

Standard parts coverage for production vehicles I believe is 10 years. I would actually think there would be quite a few parts for that vehicle because so many of them bit the dust in much less than 100,000 mi. Most people sold them if they were still running right when they started having issues. I'm glad that is not the case here.
When AutoZone or advance order something that takes two weeks to come in, it usually means it is not something they stock in any of their warehouses and they actually have to purchase it from somewhere that is not a standard supplier. That's where the two weeks comes in. I'm sure they don't sell ACDelco stuff. Had you tried any of the online sites like gmpartsgiant.com? They are usually less than the brick and mortar stores and always discounted from the dealer price.

If you have already experienced issues using that fluid, I highly recommend you do not drive it until you replace it with the proper fluid. Just because something meets and exceeds requirements a b and c does not mean it does not also have battery acid, dissolved phosgene gas, and micro shavings of aluminum and brass. For all you know the Castrol guy just wanted to make a sale. How much does he really care about your car over the phone?

 

I actually bought it from a Gm dealer locally here in Florida and he said 2weeks it was coming from Tennessee? And I said phone call and it was actually through text messages and I was sure to photo all the conversations and his spec sheets he texted over thank you so much for all the help and information this forum is very helpful!!!!

 

You actually never stated who you bought the Castrol from nor ordered the GM stuff from.

Purchasing GM products from a GM dealership makes sense.

Purchasing Castrol ATF from a GM dealership is not the first thing that comes to mind when you say you've been recommended Castrol by Autozone.

You were there. We were not.

You said phone call. I said phone call. Now you're saying it wasn't a phone call. ??

Hopefully you did a drain and fill and not a flush and fill as stated above. Flushing a transmission, especially an older one, usually dislodges all types of gunk and may redeposit it somewhere else, causing no end of performance issues. A fluid exchange done with proper equipment is fine because it does not backflush the transmission. Most people don't have that machine at home. If one adds some type of cleaning agent in there, that may cause a problem. May. And I did not say that you did. Not quite the same as adding stop leak to a cooling system, but the same concept of fix it in a can.

I would definitely slap a capable scanner on the OBD2 port and get a reading from the transmission temperature sensor on a cold engine / transmission before you start the car, with your key in the on position, then after started. You should be able to tell if the sensor is hosed or not.

​​​​​​It's probably some type of resistive sensor with a high coefficient of resistance with temperature. Kind of like the ECTS. It's entirely possible you may have just bumped the connector, but if it isn't too expensive, I would have one on hand to replace it.

Please let us know what happens when you get the golden liquid and do a drain n fill.

 

Thank you for your support Derf🤙you are appreciated!! I will try to fill in the blanks as my challenge is growing like Pinocchios nose! I did purchase the Castrol transmax atf/ctv universal fluid from Autozone just one gallon and purchased the next 2 from Walmart which was about 4 dollars cheaper for the same stuff. The next issue was my local Gm dealer notified me last night that the parts I ordered have been back ordered and has no date for shipment??????so I took the advice of another thread and used a website to get the parts I need and had the gm dealer cancel and refund the order and because it didn’t have a shipping date he was kind enough to refund my money back to the card, but his damage was already done !! I’ve drained the fluid 2 times because its condition was terrible and the 2nd time it was fairly clean but the first round of new oil became blackened pretty quickly . My plan was to do this all in one shot as soon I got the filter and change out the filter and the sensor which is in the same spot. I ordered the filter and sensor plus clip it comes with and it shipped this morning, but I’ve inquired another problem and when they sent confirmation of the 2 different ships it says package consists of clip !! I am not sure what I’m getting now!! I can’t do this without it!! On the phone but they play kick the can only to send you to a email post they never answer!! Not sure even what the sensor actually does and if it’s only feature is to send a signal to the idiot light that flashes trans hot when you start it every time then every once in a while? Does it send signals to any controls?my codes are p 0700 and says transmission control module requested mil , p1781 engine torque signal circuit, p1799-00 torque delivered signal, and finally p1781-00 same as p1781. Frustrating to see the inability to get parts for these vehicles!

 

Transmission fluid doesn't stay clean for very long, especially if you are dealing with the transmission that has not been properly maintained before you owned it. The fact that the new fluid got dirty right away is also a sign that there is still some junk in there that the new fluid is dissolving so it's not necessarily a bad thing. But the fluid will turn dark reasonably quickly, so you can't necessarily depend on the color to determine the state of the fluid like you could back in the old days.

Those codes sound like the transmission is not delivering the output torque that it thinks it should. Total wild guess but it's probably making a measurement between input torque and output torque via speed sensors and getting data it doesn't like. I'm going to guess there is slippage internally and therefore the output torque is actually too low. Probably related to when you said the RPMs would shoot to 4000 but the car would not go anywhere.

Go back and look at the exploded diagram that has the part and make sure you ordered the sensor and the clip and not just a clip. If the clip comes as a separate part, it may just be a split shipment so don't lose your hair over that if you have any left