Vehicles:
- 1996 Dodge Intrepid, 350,000km, 3.3L V6, 4-speed automatic
- 2000 Ford Windstar, 168,000km, 3.8L V6, 4-speed automatic
Symptoms:
I've seen this on 2 vehicles now (the 2 above). When slowing down for a stop, after I've shifted the automatic back into neutral (yes, I'm one of those weirdos who shifts his automatic into neutral while stopping), I hear and feel a single "thunk" sound when the vehicle speed drops bellow about 10-15 km/h. It does it very predictably, it's done it for a long long time on the Intrepid, a Windstar just came under my care for 1 week and it's doing it too.
If I didn't know any better, I'd say it felt like the tranny disengaging, but the tranny is in neutral at this point, what could it be? It feels like something big and heavy being retracted.
Update #1
Took the Intrepid out for a short drive and found the following:
- the thunk only happens when coming to a stop in Neutral
- the thunk never happens when coming to a stop in Drive
- the thunk always happens exactly at 15 km/h (10 mph), while slowing down
Update #2
Posted this question over at DodgeIntrepid.net and got some interesting responses. Basically, 2 people were able to replicate this on their 1st-gen Intrepids, and one of them on their Jeep as well. That Jeep has a manual mode, and from fooling around with it, he suggests it's the transmission shifting into 1st gear (even though I'm in neutral). It was also suggested that it's the torque converter disengaging.
I feel both these answers are iffy, but is someone intimately familiar with the inner workings of this specific transmission (Chrysler's 42LE)? Could it be clutch packs doing something?