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My wife owns a 95 MX-3 with what I think is the B6-DE motor mated to an automatic tranny. While driving, the car seems to just stay in first gear unless I let off the gas for it to shift into second or it tachs out and knocks into second. It doesn't matter if the AC is on or off. I have not checked the fluid of filter yet on the tranny. Mazda won't give me a straight answer. I personally think the bands need to be adjusted but I fear that the worst is possibly going to be the torque converter. Any ideas?

Check the fluid, but if it hasn't been changed in the last several years, change it.

Just as a warning, these auto trannies tend to... um... well...

suck.

They break before anything else usually, and they are mucho $$ from mazda. Hard to find used and working.

Best of luck.

Ryan

My 96 1.8 v6 k series auto has the EXACT same issue. I let it go on procrastinating about the problem and when to fix it ect. Now the car is in the tranny doctor office getting looked at because for the last week,the car also began to shift slowly like it was thinking about shifting then would shift. Reverse feels in neutral then gives her all by herself. It would sporatically redline to 8 rpm's say if I was turning a corner fast or punched on the gas to merge into traffic,when I let off the gas,problem stopped of course.
The car just had an oil and tranny fluid change on the 6th(I think they put the wrong fluid in my car). Prior to that the fliud was continuously topped up with dextron 3.
There is a tranny fluid leak that is sudden and major.(so it is very possible I was running her dry and not even knowing it)
Today on my way to the tranny doctor,it wouldn't get our of first gear and the rmp's were extremely high and it sounded like the engine was going to blow up , so I eased off the gas and barely applied any pressure to the gas.I couldn't go faster than 10km/h all the way to the shop.
Half way to the shop I turned around to go home and put more tranny fluid in as I thought I would be stuck in an intersection, and headed out to the shop again..the problem didn't go away.

Get er looked at before you run into something like this.