I feel your pain.. While taking a 2 day road trip to Crater Lake, I was returning through S. Oregon (not the end of the world, but you can see it from there) and I suddenly got a CEL and Check Transmission light...

Was able to get it back to Boise, and noticed absolutely no difference in performance or shifting along the way. But that blinking link just makes a person nervous.. ;0)

Anyhoo.. I had already had the tranny flushed about 4K miles ago and had received a P1870 code back in 2008 during a cross-country trip. Had it reset and drove on, looking for a reoccurence, which didn't happen. But I've watched that tranny closely ever since and figure more frequent flushings is better than just praying.

And about 6 months ago, I developed an issue where the tranny will not manually select 2nd or 1st gear settings. It manually shifts fine between 3rd and D, as well as R and P. And it doesn't seem to impact the automatic shifting/downshifting, just manually putting it in 1st or 2nd.

So I just got my VX back from having the tranny pan dropped, inspected, and flushed again and there is apparently evidence of metal in the pan. The smear does have an appearance of a metal flake paint job when viewed in the sunlight with very small particles, so obviously I have an issue. The mechanic was emphasizing that these 4l30e trannies have a history of bearing problems and that he could rebuild it and install the updated bearings.

So now I have to make a cost/benefit analysis.. It's a 1999, Ebony, @78K miles, and I'm not sure it's worth the $3K for the rebuild/installaton. And getting a used tranny is still going to be about $1k, plus the $700 installation.

So I guess my question is what risk am I taking by just driving on until I get another CEL/Chk Trans light? Is there potential for a catastrophic failure that would be a danger during highway driving? Could the tranny fail without any physical/auditory warnings?

Thanks for any suggestions/advice!!