My Car am Borked
 

So, for those of you mechanically inclined, can you give me some advice? My car is an automatic, and does not want to shift gears or something. I can barely get it above twenty in drive, and even then, slowly. I can get it to about 45-50 in 2, but I have to drive to work almost every day so that's going to be very inconvenient.

I'd hazard a guess that something is wrong with the transmission. :P

Might be something stuck in a gear, or one of the nuts is loose or something.

Or maybe the cruise control if you have it.

Take it to the shop.

Check all of your fluid levels first. If you can use the "manual" gears that means stuff is at least working.

Do you have maintenance performed regularly? Are there any dashboard indicators lit up? Does your car make any unusual sounds?

Is it catching when it tries to switch to 3rd gear or above? If so, you may have an issue with your oxygen sensor.

I checked the oil not too long ago, and I'll check it again when it stops being dark out, but the oil is fine I think. My car isn't overheating. No pretty lights come on to tell me I'm fucked. Basically, the car will all but stop at twenty, then forty, and maybe sixty or something, though I try not to push it that high. It'll go up if I have it set in two, but only if I make the engine want to vacate the car. The RPMs go really high, and the speed goes nowhere. Don't worry, I'm smart enough to not let the RPMs go too high, as that would probably be very, very, very bad.

It's the transmission. You should check your transmission fluid. Check your owner's manual on where that that stuff is.

If that isn't it, your transmission is probably borked. You probably would need to go get a new one unfortunately. It will put you about $200 US in the hole. I wish you good look. I just dealt with similar problems, so I know what you're going through.

Good luck.

$2,000 you mean, and that was what I meant by checking your fluid levels.

Ah. My mistake. Thanks for the correction there. Wouldn't want to mislead the poor guy.

One thing to check is the linkage. I just had a pretty similar problem with mine (although it is a manual) The link between the transmission and the shifting mechanism, if it isn't connected, caused me a pretty similar sounding problem.

So, I had some car problems today. Put some transmission fluid in my car. Car was running fine, so I went to run an errand and get a Utah drivers license. On the way, the car got worse than ever and I could barely get it going faster than ten miles an hour. I realized there was no way in hell I could make it to the DMV like this so I turned around to head home. Only problem is that I had to go over an overpass. Car stopped moving on the way up. Car was still on and everything, but me pushing on the gas did not translate into the tires moving. Put it in reverse and tried to turn it around so I could drive it down, or roll it down more accurately, and ended up horizontal on an overpass with reverse and drive moving me not at all. Got out to push the car, car started rolling too fast, it got away from me and hit a pole. Pole was fine and I didn't get a ticket, but now my car is dead. Radiator is broken in half. I need a new car.