Well I plugged the tire so that'* all taken care of. I have a new development in my ongoing saga of car trouble, this time some good news. I ordered a new drivers side axle seal a National 710096 to be exact, that will be here Tuesday. I attempted to slow my leak down with a bottle of Lucas Transmission Fix and it slowed the leak but also seemed to have solved my shifting issue. The car hasn't slipped between shifts or at a stop sign. It shifts like a hot knife through butter now! I'm wondering if the Lucas moved some gunk away from a shift solenoid like you mentioned or cleaned something.

Time will tell, i'll be replacing that axle seal either Tuesday or Wednesday!

Matt

I bet it will shift okay enough for a few hundred miles then go back to its old ways.

With the kind of luck I have your probably right!

That'* how that stuff works. It "helps" . . . but only for a little while. If that stuff worked for a long time, OEMs would have figured out how to make the transmissions cheaper by adding this stuff to the fluid.

I understand that stuff is really just a band aid vs a magic fix in a bottle. Hopefully it will buy me some time while I search for a used tranny. Do people do anything as far as Upgrades go for the 440- T4?

There are some, but they are generally things done during an overhaul . . . like extra clutch plates, strengthened hard parts, etc. There probably isn't too much of that stuff still out there, and probably not too many shops that mess with it any more.