2003 Baja Transmission Problems

[kc_baja]

I am having substantial transmission issues with my newly acquired Baja. It is a 2003, non-turbo, automatic. I bought it used with approx 85,000 miles from a Toyota dealer. Fortunately, it came with a 3 month / 3,000 mile warranty. Within days, I started noticing that it would slip going into dive. It felt fine otherwise. When putting it into drive, you can feel it go into gear, but it stalls briefly when you try to accelerate, and then slams in, almost as if it were low on fluid, but it's not. A Subaru tech rode with me once and thought that it might be the hydrostatic coupling (not sure if I'm saying that quite right) for the AWD system that isn't building up pressure, thus the secondary delay.

The warranty required that it go to AAMCO, and they dismissed the AWD coupling idea. AAMCO has rebuilt the tranny, pulled the tranny out of the car a second time due to broken torque converter bolt, and it is currently back in the shop again for the same problem that we started with.

Any suggestions or experience with this would be greatly appreciated. I love the Baja, and really would like to bring this to a close.

Thanks for your replies.

[bulwnkl]

Had a '99 Outback once with symptoms similar to what you describe. Dealer diagnosed bad torque convertor, replaced it under warranty, and that was the end of the issue. I'm sorry to hear that AAMCO is where it has to go for the warranty.