Q&A

My fiancée and I were going from Lawrenceburg, IN traveling south to Louisville, KY for her company picnic at Churchill Downs. We made it to a truck stop about forty-five minutes away. We had stopped for gas and when we were leaving the car started jerking real bad and did not seem to want to shift gears. We decided against driving the rest of the way to Louisville and turned around; just as we were trying to pull out of the lot she could not get any power to pull out in the roadway. She managed to get the car moving again and turned back into the lot of the truck stop and kept her foot on the brake, but it seemed to want to accelerate on its own. We stopped when we got back to Florence,KY at a Saturn dealership just so I could ask someone where to begin on the car to assess the problem when we were pretty much blown off by sales people who suggested that we may be able to trade it in on something else. They were looking to sell me a new car and I know very well that I would not be able to do that because of my credit and so forth. This was the beginning of a very long and frustrating day for us. We ended up calling the company where I bought the car at a year ago and they told us to bring it up and see what they could do. There were no technicians available to ask what to do and we were worried that it would not make it home. We ended up with a nice salesman that really did not listen to us very well with an answer that I could not trade the car in because the loan was too new. We ended up signing for another car taking out another loan that we really cannot afford and on the way home I stopped at an Auto-Zone to have the system tested because the service engine soon light was on and the result tripped a code for the throttle position sensor, which is a forty dollar piece. They showed having one in their inventory but could not find it in the store. I am just wondering if anyone else has had this problem with a 2001 Saturn L200 series and what is a sealed system on the transmission. Does that mean if it goes out it is done. I had it serviced in April and went through the receipt; because at the truck stop I tried to check the transmission fluid, but I could not even find a reservoir for the transmission. The receipt said that they topped off all fluids except where the transmission was listed it said declined because it was a sealed system. I really thought that we would not make it home without losing the transmission.