Last spring, when we were heading home from Arizona, I started getting a warning light in the bus. The overdrive light started flashing somewhere between California and Oregon and the transmission wasn’t shifting properly. It wouldn’t shift back into overdrive unless I turned it off and on manually and it was surging in and out of overdrive when going about 50 km/h.
I googled what that meant and fount it could mean a few different things from a clogged up transmission filter to a bad speed sensor to bearing problems. Repairs ranged from a fluid change to a rebuild, depending on the actual issue.
I started with a transmission fluid and filter change. I figured this was my cheapest and hopefully easiest fix. Not the problem, but after the long trip I didn’t think it was a bad thing to do anyway.
Just before we left Grande Prairie I had a friend with a code reader diagnose the bus and it narrowed it down to the speed sensor. He told me the sensor was most likely on the torque converter and I would probably need to drop the transmission to find it (worst case). I kind of left it at that until this spring when I started doing some more research.
Google told me that the sensor was either on the top of the tranny or on the differential (not inside). As the weather was getting better and I wanted to see which sensor I needed as there were a few different options. I pulled the console in the bus and there was the sensor right on top. The odd thing was that there was no wires running from it. The plug had fallen off somehow and was dangling right beside it.
Fingers crossed I plugged it back in and took it for a test drive. No light, normal shifting…no problem! Needless to say I was pretty pumped. A rebuild would have run me into the thousands and a sensor was a couple hundred, so to save all of that is always awesome.
Living Large in the North 