98 Century Class Auto-Transmission Problems
 

Hello everyone. Hope the holiday went well for all. I have a 98 Freightliner Century Class with an auto-transmission. It is a 10 speed Eaton-Fuller. I have recently experienced some problems with this that actually left me sitting on the side of the interstate. It starts with this: throughout the day the dash indicator that tells you what gear you are in looks like a jumbled up bunch of garbage. It will sometimes be blinking all of this nonsense. Then both times I was stranded I had gone through 9 gear changes and as I was going into 10th it never made it. It just went into Neutral, but actually don't think it was in Neutral. So I pull over and sit for 30 minutes the first time, 1 hour second time and then Friday night 2 hours and I assume the computer reset itself and I was able to start the truck again. I turned the truck off myself, it didn't shut itself down. On my way home Friday night, I pulled into Petro for a Lube and box check and was notified that trans box was low. He ended up putting 7 pints of Synthetic in (which is all I run). I do have a leak somewhere down there.

Any ideas as to why I am having problems. Could it have run hot? Could I have a bad battery? Bad computer? (please dear God, don't let it be this)
Hope I have given enough info. Any and all advice would be much appreciated. Thank you

The gear indicator is likely a bad indicator, and not related to the shifting problem.

Intermittent problems have started, on my Eaton Fuller 10 speed autoshift. I use the H (Hold) position, and shift manually, with the thumb button.

When I stop fast, it will sometimes fall out of gear.

A couple of recent mornings, it would go into Reverse, but felt like there was no clutch, after it was in gear. The reverse behavior went away, after it warmed up a bit.

From another with similar problems:
I had numerous problems with my eaton 10 speed auto shift, threw many thousands in parts at it to find that it was the wiring harness. This go around, the shift tower has malfuntioned and at a cost of 1400.00 I pulled the auto and went manual. So if you have a diagnostic done on your system and they tell you it will cost you a $2500.00 part, keep me in mind as I am selling my transission for $1200.00 and it has an new ECU, new power interface module, new X/Y shifter, it just needs a tower.

There was no conversion for my particular transmission. We just bought a used 10 speed manual and swapped them. The only reason why we could not convert the auto to manual was the Hi/Lo air splitter would not bolt up with the automatics housing and the mechanic did not want to try to drill and modify it. Hey a really good used transmission can be bought for under 3 grand, as a matter of fact I saw a couple of rebuilds on E-bay with warrantees for $2700.00 plus shipping. Volvo (Lake City, FL) is a bunch of idiots to tell you it would take 10 grand to fix the problem, yes a new auto shift transmission, screw that, check E-bay for eaton transmissions
here is one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/EATON...D-TRANSMISSION

Some good news (I think)...I ran my loads today running approx. 650 miles. Found out that when I "smack" the dash around the indicator, it will function correctly. I am pretty sure that my transmission being low on fluid had to have an effect on my problems. It would seem to me that it was hot and the sensor wouldn't let it go into gear. We shall see as the week goes on.