Oldsmobile Archives - Transmission Digest
Issues Pop Up During Emissions Check

How often have you had a customer with a high-mileage, 20-year-old vehicle say, “I just need it to last one more year”? With the average age of vehicles on the road more than 10 years, I am seeing more “20-somethings” coming in my bay for TLC.

A customer recently brought in her 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass with a 3.8-liter engine, 138,000 miles and a failed emission report. In our metro Denver area, we all must pass our centralized emission test – or we cannot renew our license plates.

Why Resistance Checks Don’t Always Work

The example used here is a 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue 3.8L with a 4T65-E transaxle that has a P0753 electrical code – 1-2 shift solenoid circuit – stored in the PCM; no other DTCs are present. The code will not set until the 1-2 solenoid is commanded to turn on. Now we have all seen the diagnostic flow chart for this code. No matter which repair-service publication you use they are all basically the same: Check resistance from here to here and here to here, from there to there and from here to ground, blah blah blah; I think you know what I mean. Then we print off a wiring diagram so we know what to look at.