Driving along to pay my tuition bill on Thursday... (and taking my friend to buy a car)...
I was riding along on the freeway, noticed that my Jeep was driving really funny that day, and seemed to downshift a lot. I thought OK, maybe there's a lot of ice buildup in the wheels and underbody. I would EVENTUALLY stop and clear it all out with some hot water at the spray wash.
The Jeep didn't have much power on Thursday. Every time I'd accelerate to 70, I'd end up back down to 55-60MPH and the torque converter would never freaking lock. So instead of rolling around at about 2200RPM, I'd be at 3000RPM. Figured I was just too distracted with driving and talking to the motor mouth sitting next to me that I wasn't paying enough attention to keeping up my speed.
So it's time to get off of I-696 W and hop on I-275 S, headed towards Ypsilanti.
I'm still struggling to keep up speed, and hit the gas to get to 70MPH and that's when it just jerked and redlined like it was in neutral. I checked to see if I was in drive... yup. It then decided that 2nd gear was the only gear in existence. No 1st, no 3rd, no 4th. So why is it doing this? After enough of that I just pulled over at the gas station and got rid of the ice in my wheels. Started it back up, performed perfectly until it was time to shift into 3rd and the same thing started all over again. Considering I'm so close, I just took the side streets and thankfully there was snow on the ground and nobody was going faster than 40MPH which for me, stuck in 2nd, was 3000RPM. We eventually made it to our destination, took a break from car buying (unsuccessful BTW) and I went to the car wash, disconnected the battery and knocked out as much ice as I could. It was everywhere. It already started driving better, reduced weight I guess, but just like before, the 3rd gear problem kicked in again. We limped it back to our respective homes, I may have driven a total of 120 miles in this condition.
Then after I dropped her off at home, I stopped at the local party store and that's when the ding and CEL appeared. I'm getting codes P0733 and P1790.
If I turn it off, start it back up and put the selector in "2" instead of Drive, 1st and 2nd gears operate normally.
We won't get started with averaging 10MPG over the last few MONTHS. Everyone that has seen me drive knows that I drive like a grandpa. A crazy grandpa, but a grandpa.
Time for a new transmission I guess. My Jeep has 83,000 miles on it.
It's Chrysler's problem now!!!!
At least I have this Dodge Dart to drive in the meantime, so I'm not without a vehicle!!!
Also: Considering how strong the smell of rubber was after all that 5000+RPM driving, pretty sure I'm now gonna need a new serpentine belt. Guess I'll take care of that after I get it back. Hopefully I can make it home to install it!!
Glad to hear she is back together and ship shape. I love the $0 bottom line. I had them swap out my gas tank for the burp issue a few weeks ago and $0 was all it cost. 
