A friend of mine has a 93 Cavalier with the 4 cylinder that she needs friday for Spring Break. It stalled on her the other day and the mechanic gave her a $800 estimate for a transmission solenoid. As far as I know there is only one solenoid for the transmission? Does anyone know where it is on this car? I'm assuming it's hard to get to since they were going to charge so much.

PR,

The TCC solenoid should be in the valve body. If you can get teh pan off cleanly while the trans remains in the car, you may have a chance. If not, looks like YOU'RE driving on spring break.

i believe it's a 4 pin connector on the forward side of the trans more towards the engine than not

i had that happen to me in my 89 celebrity. The tcc solenoid wouldn't disengage, so when i slowed down or came to a stop it would stall the engine. I just went the cheap way and unplugged the connections on the front of the tranny, since i'd never worked on FWD trannies before. When i did replace it, it was about a $75 part. and about 4hrs of work.

Well unfortunately I'm not going on Spring Break at all. I will replacing my head gaskets and rear main seal on my new engine that has only run for an hour!
I guess what you guys are telling me is that this isn't something I want to try to fix in the parking deck at school in about an hours time??

Nah, you won't be doing it in the parking lot.

Most FWD trans have the TCC solenoid in the side cover area, right in the drivers side fenderwell pan.

The pan looks easy to remove, but the pan is deep because of all the guts, and the pan usually doesn't come out without at least removing all the trans mounts and tilting the trans/engine down far enough to remove the cover.

Most will come out with the tilting method, some come out without tilting..and some require the trans to be removed.

Good luck.

It sounds like the TCC to me. I did this gob last summer on my 93 Cavalier with the 2.2. You’ll have to take the driver side tire off and all the plastic inner fender stuff. Then you can get to the side cover of the trans. I didn’t have to tilt the trans/engine to get the cover off, but did have to bend the lines to the cooler a bit. Once the cover is off you’ll see the solenoid. There is one torx screw that holds it on, don’t remember the size, but it a bigger one. MAKE SHOURE YOU LOC-TITE THAT. Getting the connector out of the trans case is a b!tch, but just fight it, you’ll win. Then getting the connector for the new solenoid in the case is a bigger b!tch, keep fighting, you’ll win. Then using a new gasket, put the cover back on, fill trans to normal level, about 1 quart or so. Put the tire back on, get you payment (Yes I’m a pig) and have a beer. Always save the beer for after work is complete.
And BTW this job is a much bigger PITA then it sound. You don’t want to do this in a parking lot, you’ll never have that one screw driver that is just right to use as a lever to get the new TCC solenoid connector in, or something like that. Just drive it home, pop it in neutral when stopping, and tap the gas a bit when putting back in to drive (drove mine for three weeks like this). This is NOT GOOD for the trans, but it’ll get the car to your place.
If you need more help drop me a line and I’ll try to remember the details of what I did.

I KNEW there were more than fourteen good reasons that I'm not really keen on FWD cars. That makes fifteen....

Thanks for the info - again I learned something here today.

WOW, Vader learned something and I had something to do with it. Me feel good now! I never thought YOU would learn something from me. :lala:

Seriously Vader, your post are some of the most informative on the board.

NEED,

I'm sure there are a lot of things I can learn from you. The difference between learning or not is attitude, and thus paying attention to the world around you. The day anyone stops learning, he might as well shut everything down and crawl into a box, and stop being a burden to society.

If you ever meet someone who claims to know everything, tell them that ONE of that things they don't know is that they are a liar.

Thanks again for the info. Now I can be a little more knowledgeable when someone asks a similar question (as long as I don't forget it).