just a suggestion but how often was the atf changed before all this started happening? It sounds like as the clutches wear down over time the partcles become part of the fluid acting like the friction modifier, and after the first fluid change all the old clutch particles go away and things start to slip and eat eachother up. then each next fluid change removes more and more of the particles. Its also possible something large enough has gotten lodged in the valve body or stuck in a screen resulting in reduced pressures. just a theory, as my friend slowly watched his trans lunch itself after doing the first fluid change in a very high mileage interval. alot of people forget about the trans fluid (myself included)

I never dug into my a/t that much because I had erratic downshift issues as well i suspected valve body issues, changed the fluids and it slowly went downhill untill i manual swapped it

Rings very true to Alpha Centauri's advice to either change your ATF at 30K ish intervals or, if you haven't, don't touch it at high mileage as you'll upset whatever bizarre balance of crud is already in there and likely make things worse while trying to do the exact opposite.

Speaking of crud. I've not been kind to this tranny while I've had it. It appears the previous owners took good care of this car but I've neglected it far more than I should have and I'm grateful it still gets me where I'm going. When I had the loose input shaft nut thing going on remember I drove it for thousands of miles that way. It caused the clutch pack assy to rub against the inside of the side cover until it wore a groove all the way through in about a 230 degree arc. Drove it like that for miles and miles rain or shine. When I finally got around to doing something about it first I did a temporary fix on the original cover and did NOT change the fluid, only topped it off. I know there was water, road grit and who knows what else in that fluid but I didn't have funds to change fluid and filter at the time. Later, when I was able to replace the side cover I was able to do a fluid and filter change then. There's no telling how much crud is still in there that was trapped in the torque converter during the fluid change. I'm pretty sure that's the cause of my problems here but once again, I'm kind of stuck with what I've got for now because of family drama. When things like this happen though (this particular shifting problem) it's because of a failure of a specific part of the system to perform properly. Knowing what it is would make it easier to go straight to the source of the problem to correct it rather than using a shotgun approach. True, sometimes the shotgun approach is actually quicker and more practical but in this case I'd rather fix specifically what's wrong since I'm quite sure this transmission is quite fine if only it didn't have some crud stuck somewhere blocking the flow. The only reason this thread has gone on so long is BECAUSE of the family drama that keeps me from spending adequate time working on this problem. Meanwhile I'm hopeful someone here has experience they can share that would allow me to more quickly get the problem diagnosed and corrected when I do get to fixing it. I also know that good descriptions of symptoms with the eventual solution being documented here is useful to the next person trying to google an answer to their problem.

Another 4,000 miles and it's shifting a little (emphasis on LITTLE) more normally.
There's an occasional failure to engage Drive or Reverse on a cold start.
All I have to do is rev it up and it'll go into gear but it's rare, random and not related to fluid level or condition since it's always correct and clean.

EXACT same shifting issue..
 

Hey Jammer did you ever figure out why it was shifting like that my mother has a 99 that does exact same thing . And I am trying to figure out what it is I did notice that a vacuum line seem to change the way it shifted for obvious reasons but it had a bad hose on the PCV valve I replaced it and it shifts a little better but still does that wacko downshift up shift slam into gear like you explained . I was just curious if you figured out what was wrong with it I know this is an old thread but you never know.


QUOTE=jamnar;56495 "start up to any speed the upshifts are smooth, timely and normal.
If I get on the gas and the tranny needs to downshift for power I get this strange behavior (it doesn't matter if I'm going from 4th to 3rd or 3rd to 2nd or 2nd to 1st): The rpms will go up as expected for the lower gear, there will be a micro second burst of acceleration, then a half second where the rpms drop and there's no acceleration at all, then the rpms go up again and the acceleration resumes. It's really hard for me to describe as you can see but the result is this strange go-wait-yeah go sense from the car. If I ease up on the gas as it starts to downshift I can make it happen more gently but that's about it.

Transmission doesn't feel like it's slipping and there's none of that classic flaring behavior where the rpms go up but you're just not accelerating accordingly. I've also noticed that it doesn't matter if I've get it close to redline when it downshifts or if it's just above idle, the behavior is the same.
It almost feels like it downshifts, then tries to upshift, gives up and downshifts again, all in about 1 second."[/QUOTE

His name is Jamnar
 

He stops by now and again.

Personally, I wouldn't wreck his name if I were lookin for help
Pretty sure he still owns the ride.

He's likely caught up in a Honda project.

I love suspense

@PreElite- yes, it still shifts funny and I still haven't figured it out. Since the car gets me where I'm going reliably I just haven't made it a priority.
(So far I've put over 60,000 miles on it with this going on)
Like Derf said, I'm deeply involved in another project right now and have another one right behind it before I can get back to fixing the Saturn. Even then I'll be fixing the head problem before I worry about the transmission.
If I do ever get the tranny problem figured out I will definitely update this thread.