Tranny is still fuxored, any help please?

[Trouble Maker]

Posted this on Columbus DSM too, so if you read it there, it's the same thing.

 

Any DSM guys have a known working TCU? I can give someone a deposit if they'd like while I borrow it becuas the problem is intermentient and doesn't happen all of the time, so I might need it for a week or so.

 

Background: Car stays in thrid gear no matter what just while the car is on, turn it of and back on once the cars warmed up and it's fine.

 

Thinking it's the caps in the TCU, take TCU and ECU out and sure enough there's a leaky cap in the TCU. I replace the caps but this doesn't fix the problem. The cap did leak out on the board and a surface mount diode, I'm thinking this might be the problem.

 

Now the car will start in first sometimes, then 'clunk' a few times and stick in third. One time it 'clunked' back out of third into fourth and worked fine without me turning the car off and on. It's only done the clunking thing twice, and it sometimes just does the normal third gear only bit (the TCU going into safe mode, but doesn't spit out any codes). And it only ever does this when the car is cold, making me think it's a mechanical (tranny) problem...

 

I replaced the tranny filter and fluid (switched to B&M trick shift, cheaper and closer). That didn't help either.

 

Any help would be greatly appericated. This is looking more and more like an internal tranny problem, but I want to try to do the easy, cheper stuff first. Becuase if it's the tranny I'm not gona waste my time rebiulding the auto tranny, I'm just gona swap a 5 speed, but I'd rather save that for when I actually have the money to do it.