2002 Protege5 Auto Trans. Problem
 

Tonight when i was leaving work i started by car, as usual, and attepted to shift gears to Drive. Unfortunally the gears seemed locked and did not want to shift our of park . Finally after stuggling for a little while it seemed to go into drive. Now the problem is that the transition from park to drive seems "harsher" to me then it was before and now i can hear a slight sound, a kind of a click, a few seconds after i put the car into gear (i don't remember if it was originally like this). My car only has 13000km on it and is generally not diven hard. Also there have been NO MODDIFICATIONS of anytype, its completly stock. My question is 1. is this a transmission problem and 2. is the transmission of a 2002 protege5 covered by mazda (i lost my warenty book conveniently). Thanks for your help
Mark

Sounds like a tranny problem to me. Take it back to your dealer, your warranty covers it.

If you're under 50,000 miles, you're covered.

Sounds like it *could* be the brake-lock feature sticking - possibly. The car won't shift out of park unless the brake is depressed. So if something is out of adjustment, the shift lever might get stuck or be hard to pull from park. I had the same thing after messing with the center console one time - very tough shifting out of park.

I know you didn't mess with anything in there, but it's just an idea. You never know.

Was this a one-time thing or is it repeating?

~HH

Was your car parked on an inline? If you let the car roll after you put it in park, it would "load" transmission and make it difficult to shift out of park. This can happen to any automatic. Best way to avoid this is to shift to neutral, set p-brake, release foot brake, then shift to park. This will prevent the trans from binding under load. Good luck.

I always stop, press the brake, pull the p-brake, then put it on park.

me too, i'm learning myself the ways of the manual for my next car.