how fast should I drive in second gear?
While running the engine at high RPMs might burn out the gunk, apparently it's not so good for transmissions. Starting a year ago, the family V'ger got a "service engine soon" light, and would only use second gear to run - not always, just sometimes. It even happened for a while on the trip to Utah last year. Well, this year it has happened more. We took it to the dealership mechanic today, and there appears to be lots of small metal pieces in the transmission fluid. While ice chips in your pop is a good thing, stuff that's metal that uses a fluid is not supposed to end up as small pieces in the fluid. So, a rebuilt transmission it is. We will have a car with 40,000 miles on the engine, 0 miles on the transmission, and 120,000 miles on everything else. But we love the interior...