'96 Tbird Transmission problem

[zebradog]

Hey guys, I'm new to the forum and I hope someone can help me out here. My wife started complaining about the car acting funny, so we went for a drive yesterday.

When I come to a light or stop sign, and I'm stopped for a few seconds, the card starts to shake; intermittantly. I almost feels like the engine is missing, or the car wants to lurch forward. Then RPM varies by 100 or so when it shakes. The engine runs really smooth when not in gear, so I'm confident it's not missing. I've tried turning on and off the AC, overdrive and nothing changes. It does it in 1, 2 and drive and but I don't know if I can make it do it in reverse.

It's not low of fluid, I just had an oil change. The car has 75k miles on it and has always been well maintained, maybe letting it go to 4500 miles between oil changes but that would be the worst of it. It mainly gets city driving, and it's driven lightly not hard at all. Transmission fluid was changed about 30k miles ago.

I've been working on cars for a long time and have a fair amount of general knowlege about them. My guess is a transmission problem, but I was hoping to find someone who works on these, has worked on similar transmissions or maybe owned a this car and had a similar problem. I've checked everything I can think of and I'm open to all suggestions and advice.

Thanks in advance

[phjohnso]

Check the motor mounts - they may need to be replaced.

[zebradog]

You know....that was the first thing I actually thought, was it sounded like a motor mount, but it's pretty hard to break one of those in my experience. Have there been problems in the past with these and the motor mounts?

[zebradog]

Motor mounts look fine from what I can tell.

[nomadninja]

im pretty sure its the tranny have you used the mercon v in it. i was having the tranny shudder and the same problem as you then i did a trans drain and replaced with mercon and it went away i would sit at 750 rpm at a red light then it would hit like 500 and fell like it would die havnt had the problem since

[skyraider42]

sounds like the tourque converter to me. keeps locking up and unlocking. i had a simular problem with my 97. went to the parts store and got some converter stop,worked fine for me.