The patient is an AW70L, installed in a '93 940 non-turbo with about 240k miles on it. The tranny has been cleaned, fluid flushed every 2-3 years for the last 6 years I've had the car. No towing or other abusive behavior.

Recently (about 2 weeks ago) it started acting funny - the lockup function started to seem a bit wishy washy. It was time for a fluid change anyway, so I didn't think much of it. The next symptom was more worrisome - on cold startup, the tranny did not want to shift out of first for about 1 min. Had to goose the throttle and then let off to encourage a shift. With the problem more urgent now, I flushed the fluids, finding the old stuff to be quite burned and of low viscosity. With the new fluid in place, the car seemed to drive fine again on my test drive. Gave the car back to the wife and felt good about myself for a few hours.

Then the wife reports the same behavior (holding first when cold) again, and smelling burned fluid at her destination. Seems the problem was not simply old fluid, but something more serious. So, my questions are - does anybody recognize this failure mode? Am I looking at failure here? Does it sound like a valve body problem (fixable), or a junkyard tranny swap situation?

Thanks for any input...