I just got back from a 2500km run to Kelowna and back. Temps ran between plus 10C and minus 20C, so fairly cool. I was in ice and snow through the mountain passes. I noticed, on a couple of occasions, at 70 mph or so when reaching the summit of steep hills, that the trans would not shift into top gear immediately. It was only after deliberately and substantially letting off the throttle that it would reluctantly drop from 3700rpm down to 2500. I also noticed that all gear shifts seem a bit harder than they have been since I flushed the trans and changed to synthetic last year. When I first did the flush, the shifts became glassy smooth.
The car has 221,000 km on it, and is otherwise in top condition.
Is there a filter on the AW30 that can be cleaned, as there is on the AW70/71? Could there be another cause of this slow shifting? I have it up on stands just now and am serivicig it an changing out some worn bushings, so it would be a great time to clean any filters it there are any to be cleaned.
Thanks
JD
Fort St. John BC

I had trouble with mine a couple years ago did everything from flushing to replacing the lock up solenoid and what finally did the trick was running some Auto RX through it. It has been fine for the last couple years since.

There were a lot of miles on the car when you changed the fluid over to syn fluid-there may have been some sludge build up that the syn fluid has started cleaning out. The filter in these trannies is a screen-nothing else-if the pans never been off, I'd say drop it and clean the filter and pan-refill with new syn fluid and flush the rest of the fluid and refill-that may take care of the problem-but thats cheaper by far than having to buy a new tranny--by the way how does the fluid look now-is it black?
Poolman