Alright. Here'* what happened.

Coming home from work a little late on Thursday. I was hot rodding it around a few street corners and being aggressive on the gas and brakes a little bit. At least more than normal.

I was waiting in line at a stoplight but I was a bunch of cars back. I started on the throttle and the car was barely moving, hardly any RPM, and had the pedal practically to the floor. I immediately knew something was wrong and pulled over in a right turn lane to let the cars behind me get by. I was coasting and touched the throttle again, and it seemed normal. I was then the front of the pack at the same stoplight.

Green light: hit the gas again. This time it shifted okay into second, but it wouldn't go to third, as if I had it in second gear on the floor. The RPMs were high when I hit the gas. I let off the gas, and again, traffic was bumper to bumper, so I didn't have far to go before stopping again or to get it up to speed, so I was okay. I kept the RPM'* low. I stopped again. I then hit the throttle, and from that point on, taking busy streets the rest of the way home, about 7 to 8 miles, from 35 to 50 MPH, the car ran normal, but I was driving it like a grandma (sorry grandma) the rest of the way home, staying in the right lane in case the tranny blew up on me. I checked the fluid immediately when I got home. It was at an excellent level, but it wasn't very red. It was orangish red. More orange than red. Dirty. "Very," as my car-guy father-in-law put it when he saw it.

Anyway, I'm in the processs of doing an extensive 2 month tune-up on it (I'm a busy guy) and I was going to get around to dropping the tranny pan, changing filter, and putting in new fluid. So I did that Thursday night as it was kind of forced upon me my the erratic episode I had above. So, I grabbed the keys to the wife'* minivan, went to NAPA, got the filter/gasket kit, bought 6 quarts of proper fluid and came home and did the change. The inside of the pan had no chunks of metal, just what seemed to be a normal grayish sediment in the bottom of the pan, and the square magnet inside was covered in the same gray dirt(metal dust, I know). I bought the car in Jan of '04, with 97K on it. It'* possible the fluid was never changed. I might never know. It now has 124K on it. The guy I bought the car from did keep fantastic care of it, so I would like to think he changed the fluid at normal times.

Anyway, I ran the car around the block and even took it on the highway for a few minutes: ran perfect. Drove it Friday to work and back, and even took it out for 20 minutes during lunch. Ran perfect. Drove it today to the bank and back, about 12-14 miles round trip: ran perfect. I've driven it about 60 to 70 miles since the problem happened.

My question: should I be worried? Anybody have any experience with this type of problem? Did I pass some sludge through it and it caused the episode? I'm at a loss since the tranny has worked great since and even before the episode occurred. Never have had any problems with it at all.[/b]