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I have an automatic 2006 Nissan Altima and am having what I assume is a transmission issue.

When I have not recently been driving, my car is slow to shift into 4th gear. Normally it will shift and I will be around 1400 or 1500rpm when I'm going 35, but when I am first driving, I will be around 2300rpm for maybe around half a mile before it shifts and I drop back down to around 1500. Once it has made the shift once though, it is perfectly fine for the rest of that drive.

Anybody know what would be causing this? Is this something fixable without having to replace the transmission, or is that a sign of overall wear on the transmission?

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Based on the age of you vehicle you should be over 100k miles. Have you maintained the transmission? Replaced the filter and flushed the fluid? If so, it could be the transmission its self from wear and tear. Does your car have a manual gear selector too? Can you shift into all gears manually, cold or warm? We recently had a 2004 Altima here at my shop for the same complaint as you (high RPMS before shifting in to higher gears), in our case the fluid level was low. We replaced the filter, flushed the transmission, it helped remedy the issue.

The fluid needs to create pressure to change gears. As the fluid gets hot it expands, possibly causing it to finally shift in to 4th gear.

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  • I'm around 160k miles, and I'm not sure how well the transmission has been maintained because I'm not the first owner. I have checked the fluid level and the transmission fluid level is actually a little high rather than low, and looks pretty clean. I don't have manual gear selection on my model though to be able to give that a try.
    – Belizzle
    Oct 19, 2015 at 13:12

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