saxjazman9

Quick question (not a car expert):

We bought this Cougar with about 80k miles on it (it now has 110k). The transmission seems a bit off, when it's in lower gears (between 20 and 35 mph), when it switches from "1st to 2nd" and "2nd to 3rd", it sometimes "skips" for a brief second, not always, and especially when it's colder (eg: when the engine hasn't been running for a few min).

My first thought is to flush the transmission, as I don't think it's been done since we bought it (no way of knowing if it was ever done before we bought it). I've heard that flushing it "this late in the game" can do more damage than good though. Now I'm second guessing myself. I think I need to take it somewhere and get it professionally looked at, just curious what types of things I might need to look for and / or expect.

Right now the radiator light is somewhere between on and off, a (what I think is) separate issue i'm going to get taken care of today. But who knows, maybe it's related... ?

Again, not a gear-head (in the "Car" sense), just curious what I might be in for and if anyone else has experienced this with the 2000's. About a year ago we found out that the alternator was cracked and that the car's computer has a known issue of a false "Catalytic converter" warning signal...