To make a long story short, I was temporarily hung up in a deep mud hole during an xcursion this weekend. After I got out, my brake & battery lights where on so I decided to run it up the car wash to hose the mud of the engine. Once I got on road, the transmission wouldn't shift into 3rd gear. Instead it acts like it slips into neutral and RPMs jump up to 5k.

Any ideas on where to begin on this one?

Hose off the transmission linkage?

Hmm, doesn't sound like the failsafe mode (3rd gear only) but maybe the bottom of your radiator is full of mud and the transmission isn't cooling adequately because of it...

Need to have it looked at. Unfortunately, getting deep into mud like that can do a lot of things.

Double check your fluid level. Inspect it closely (off the dipstick) and look for any particles, strawberry milkshake coloring and smell.

Not a lot we can do to diagnose a slushbox on the 'net. But some more information could help.

Is your tranny still doing this.

I had the exact same situation and symptons going through a mudhole....but after babying it, it went back to normal operation. I did get the tranny flushed, filled and reviewed the following day. There has not been any recurrance some 20,000 miles later.

Avoid the mud...bad juju.

Yes it's still doing this but I haven't even worked on it yet. Spent this evening repairing my mudded up alternator. So far, the dash lights have gone away. I'll take on the tranny tomorrow night.

Hmmmm....my tranny only acted up for maybe 5 miles after I got off the trail.

I attributed it to the torque converter somehow getting weirded out.....I dunno. But as I said, I had a flush and fill done and the fluid and whatnot looked at at the dealer....nothing was noted or observed as fouled. And the auto has worked fine since then.

Hope it is a simple solution for you.

i had this problem and ended up puttin it in 4hi, 4n, 4lo, back out, then reverse and then drive and it stopped, and this was in a parking lot. hadn't been offroad in about 4 days or so

No luck....I changed out the transmission fluid, it was clean, no particles or anything in it. I went ahead and changed the oil while I was at it too.

The linkage underneath is clean. I'm not sure what else to check on.

The tranny still won't shift out of 2nd gear and on top of that, I can't drive it anywhere, even extremely slow, because the temporature gauge gets really high after driving just one mile.

Time to get a professional opinion. You've got some issues there that the internet just isn't going to be able to accurately diagnose.

Sorry.

That's what I figured. I plan on calling Nissan today.

What ever happened with this problem. I had a similar problem and would like some more reading...