89 B2 trans slipping, now won't go into gear. Help?

[HunterDan]

Long story short, drove the B2 To work for the first time. When I got I it to leave, I put it in drive, and nothing happened. Cycled through te gears and back I drive, gave it a touch of gas and it banged into drive.

So I got all te way to the intersection, and when I had to stop for traffic, I had to rev it up again, and it would bang into gear. Heading up the road, when I would get over 40 mph or so, it would start to smoke and apparently coolant was leaking out from somewhere, because the rear of the truck had it all over the window/hatch.

Long story short, I made it almost all the way home, and at the top of the hill, just before creating over it, the trans slipped out of gear and I could not make it. So I sat there for a few minutes to try to let things cool off. Tried cycling it through the gears and revving it up, and nothing. The Last time I tried to rev it up, the radiator cracked and coolant went everywhere. Luckily a guy drove by an pulled me back to the house.

So here it sits, cracked radiator, and won't shift into hear. Any ideas?

 

[PetesPonies]

You should have searched. The A4LD is known for this. Assuming you are not low on fluid . . . it's probably toast just because of the nature of the A4LD.

 

[wildbill23c]

What does the radiator cracking have to do with the transmission failure though? That's the part I don't get.

That A4LD transmission is trash, don't rebuild, replace with a different transmission completely. Went through 2 of them in a 93 Ranger within about 16 months. After that the truck was sold, I wasn't about to throw anymore money that pile of crap transmission.

 

[Slammin Sam]

You didn't mention how your temp gauge looked, but if it got hot enough to "crack" the radiator, you may have more trouble than just a cooked tranny.

 

[HunterDan]

Well I'm starting to think it had a small Crack to begin with, because when I was telling a few guys at work about the problem, one of them said they were following me the last mile or two and that I was leaking something.

So I'm assuming it just got worse and worse til it just made the crack bigger. The temp gauge was in the normal zone the whole time, and even after it cracked, the gauge was not reading over heat.

I checked the oil, was clean, not milky or anything, and the truck still starts and idles fine, just won't go into gear...

I dont know if it was a coincidence that both things happened at once or not?