Newbie: Tranny Question

Brambo · May 1st, 2003, 10:20 PM

Just acquired a 99 Frontier SE King Cab. Great truck. But I need to learn an awful lot about it and this looks like the place.

Friend tells me that the trannys in these can a bit of a problem. My truck is an Auto with only 51400 miles, the shift from 1st to 2nd is real hard, with a little clunk and a little jolt. Other 2 shifts are as smooth as glass. Is more pronounced when cold. Downshifts are also smooth in all shifts.

Does this sound normal for these trucks? Am I looking at something serious? Would a fluid change help? Any ideas and/or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

2000SE · May 1st, 2003, 11:00 PM

The 1st thing to do is get the ATF flushed. This should help if the fluid is original. A bottle of lubegard ATP after the flush might help with the rough shift if not using a synthetic.

Another thing to do is get a real transmission cooler. Heat is the destroyer of transmissions.
I'd recommend a synthetic like Amsoil, Redline, Neo or Mobil1.
Also, it might be a good time to check the motor/transmission mounts, the u-joints, and any driveline/drivetrain bearings.

Ag Bullet · May 2nd, 2003, 02:04 PM

The 1st to 2nd shift is harsh across the board in the Frontiers and Xterras. I agree that a good tune up and flush and fill of the tranny might be in order. As far as this being a good resource.... There is a lot of good info here, but it gets lost in the posts about hardbody trucks and pathfinders. There are several other forums that offer specific Frontier areas: www.nissanfrontier.net, www.nissanoffroad.net, www.4x4parts.com, to name a few.

aaronford · May 2nd, 2003, 10:43 PM

Okay, the hard shift may be normal, but the clunk sounds serious. Try parking the truck on a flat surface, put in park, chock the tires about 12"in front of and behind for safety, get up underneath and roll the truck back and forth by hand letting the park gear stop the truck, getting a little more aggressive with each rock. Rocking the truck while in park will force the driveline to load in reverse, then foward, then reverse, and so on. You should be able to pinpoint where the noise is coming from. Suspected items may be rearend, u joints, carrier bearing, tranny mount, engine mount, and so on. This should work unless the problem is really in the transmission, but you have too few miles to worry about that. Do not get to carried away, as the park pin may become bent if too much force is placed against it. I doubt if you could do it by hand, but ya never know. Let us know what you find, it may help the next guy. Aaron

Mr.Mike! · May 3rd, 2003, 02:21 AM

The flush that you will be seeking is a "Trans-tech" flush and MOST shops have this piece of machinery. It flushes the transmission fluid while the engine (and tranny parts) are running. This gets the fluid ouf of the torque convertor, tranny lines, cooler, and all the other parts of the trans fluid system. This gets as close to 100 percent as is possible with out total disassembly to clean. Everyone please feel free to add to this, but I believe you will be looking at arount $65-100 bucks or so to get this done. I second 2000se's recommendation of adding the tranny lube gard stuff. If you are not planning on flushing the tranny fluid (after this flush of course) perhaps the synthetic tranny fluid would be a pretty good way to go. I do oil changes on my truck every 2500 miles, and I do a tranny fluid drain and fill every 5000 miles. If you do the drain and fills (really don't need to but I'm kinda anal about making sure all my fluids are good) so frequently like I do you proably jdon;t want the synthetic fluid since you'll be dumping out 3 qts every 5k. Good luck to you.