Okay i'm going to start by saying that my car has way more miles on it than any car should -- around 300,000. Its a '94 chevy cavalier and my dad, an amazing mechanic, has rebuilt the engine already and probably replaced nearly everything under the hood. He has even more knowledge on the car perhaps because it used to be his. Anywho, recently in the past year or so, my car has really started giving me problems. The biggest problem I have now is my transmission, according to my father. My car while coming to a complete stop, like slowing down at a stop light or stop sign will start to shake or stutter and then die. Now when it first started happening, I could turn the car back on after 2 or 3 tries and be on my way but recently it took like 5 minutes to get the thing running and you could start it by just putting it into the drive position. It's an automatic transmission by the way if you could tell already. Every time you went from park to drive it killed. My dad ended up having to quickly put it from park to neutral then to first, then eventually second, then drive. Its like the drive part is busted. After a bad day of having it die almost every time it stopped, it stopped doing it. It didn't die for about 8 months. Yesterday then it all of a sudden killed at took a couple of tried to get it going. Then I took a turn and my transmission slipped. Whenever I take a turn, I could hear my transmission slip, though I didnt know that was the sound it was making til yesterday and thought nothing of it. Turns out I had no transmission fluid in my car. Well we put about 3 quarts in and the car still dies when I stop. My dad says the overdrive is busted because only going at those speeds, and when you slow down to stop does my car shake, for lack of a better word, and die. Is he correct when saying this? Can you ruin your transmission if you run your car with little to no transmission fluid? The most obvious answer is to get a new car. Yes, I know this, and if i had the money I would. I'm trying to pinpoint the source of my problems and anything would be appreciated and different opinions is always good too. I'ts hard to describe the whole problem cause it does different things at different times so if you have question ask away and sorry about the novel here. If you have read through the whole thing and still want to answer back my hat is off to you.

helper05

well, yes, if you have little to no trans. fluid you can not only ruin it, you can totally blow your transmission. Ive seen this happen before, I've worked on cars for three years. Take a look in your owners manual as to the specifications as to how much trans. fluid should be put in, the average is about 4-5 quarts. The way things are sounding is, that yes, your overdrive is busted, probably happened when running low on trans. fluid. How fast does it go through the trans fluid? You might have a leak in the transmission. All in all sounds like you need a new transmission, which, with it being automatic, its gonna be pretty pricy, depending on what the labor rate is, if you have it done in a garage. When it dies, and you go to start it again, does crank over fast or slow? Did you try a new battery? I'm not always on this site, so you can e-mail me at: