My grandaughter has a 2001 Sonata that has frozen in third gear for the last week. It has 145k on it. Her mother just put a bundle in it and would like it to hold up for college. Are their any specific problems for this or is itjust old due to mileage? What should be tested to determine the shift failure?

 

I did not get a reply to the transmission shifting problem, failure to go into overdrive, from this site. However I tried the allpar.com site and a southern gent,by the name ofSeed, gave me a source for the info needed. One cause could be low trans fluid. The other and most likely could be the input or output sensors; either one could cause the transmission to stay in third. These sensors are located externally. I hope Wieland from Germany is checking this site who has the same problem. Greetings from America. Hope your upcoming holidays are happy.

 

Yep, you've probably got it. If it's stuck in 3rd gear, it's in "limp home" mode; that means that most likely the transmission is okay internally but a sensor is feeding it bad information that is confusinig the computer, so it just puts it into the fail-safe mode. The other sensor that could be off is the transaxle range switch (the actual position of the transmission lever and the switch do not agree).