I recently acquired a very clean 85 turbo wagon from a friend. The car has 98,000 miles and runs great but will not upshift into 3rd gear. (out of nowhere it just stopped doing it one day according to him) Reverse and the upshift between first and second are fine. Can you recommend anything I can do to help diagnose the problem? I have a spare tranny but I'd like to look into this more before going that route. Thank You.

I am assuming that this is the 3-speed automatic? (aka 3AT). Typically, problems are caused by less-than-fresh ATF.

 

Specifically, your problem is probably caused by a problem with the governor. This is an externally serviceable valve assembly that lives under the aluminum dome on the non-distributor side (USA "passenger side") of the tranny, almost directly above the front axle shaft. Typically, the valve gets gummed up and needs to be disassembled, cleaned and polished. Another possible cause is that the governor's drive gear (which mates to the final drive) could be severely worn, what we refer to as "apple-cored" due the the stripped-out center of the gear's teeth.

 

Do a SEARCH on governor and you will find more info. We used to have something in the USRM (online repair manual), but I am not sure if it is still there after recent hacks and restores.

I took a while to find it...

http://www.indysworld.com/80s/general/USRM/Transmission/Governor/ATgovenorclean.htm

Sure enough. I removed the governor shaft and its "apple cored" really bad. Anyone have a spare laying around? This is a turbo car so it has the metal gears, not the nylon ones. Thanks

You probably should check your Dealer first (they might have one in stock), or check out:

 

RockAuto (http://www.rockauto.com)

or

PartsQuick (http://www.partsquick.com),

 

both of which want about $14 (plus shipping) for the metal gear. (When I bought one from my local Stealership a few years ago, they charged me $70 for the gear!!!) RockAuto gets a lot of good mention on this board. PartsQuick has free shipping for purchases over $75, and sometimes they have some decent prices on t-belts and such (they had a $0.02 sale on a bunch of Old Gen stuff last year, and I ordered several batches ).

 

I should have 3, but it probably wouldn't be cheaper or quicker than ordering from either RockAuto or PartsQuick.

Thanks for the info. I ended up swapping the gear from my spare tranny in and now I have 3rd gear again. I will still order a new one so my spare trans is good to go. Thanks for your help!

A caveat for you:

 

Sometimes replacing the gear works out well, sometimes the condition that caused the damaged driven gear may still exist and wipe out your new gear in as little as 2 weeks. (I have had both situations.)