My 16 year old son has a 1996 Camaro.
3.8 Liter
4 Speed Automatic

This car keeps displaying the "shift skip" light in the cluster and when this happens my son complains of the car acting strange.
I have driven the car numerous times and have not been able to experience this personally.

He says that it mostly happens when the roads are wet.

I have read many articles on the web about CAGS (Computer Assisted Gear Selection) and have found NOTHING about this feature being installed on an automatic transmission. They mainly speak of the 6 speed manual gearbox.

I have purchased a 2.2K Ohm resister so that I can disable it. There were many pages on the web about how to do this and that was my intent. But once I got the car up in the air and went to unplug the solenoid on the transmission, I realized that his car does not have the solenoid that I read about. Or at least I didn't see it. It may be too difficult to see.




Can any of you confirm or deny that the 4 speed automatic transmission has this feature installed? Does anyone else have this "shift skip" on their Camaro with an automatic transmission?

I even went to my local Chevy dealership and talked to the mechanics there. They said they have not heard of this on a automatic - only 6 speed manuals.

Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated.





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its only 6 speeds, however the gauges are universal so everyone will have the light. I bet he has an unrelated malfunction. since you do not have the feature (and therefore the solenoid) i dont know what good the resistor will do. Whatever is up with the car is tripping the light. It may or may not be transmission related. all you really know is something is wrong. You would have to describe a little better how the car acts "strange". that would help to pinpoint this better. It's probably not a faulty sensor since the SEL isnt on.

 

Are his gauges from a Z28 (150mph) or the V6 (120mph)? The only light that would most likely come on during drives in the rain are "Low Trac".


3.8s never had 6 speeds, and have different gauges.

 

You guys are a lot of help. Thank you.

I suspected that the 4 speed automatic did not have this feature because I can't think of any reason for it.

I will have to speak with my son in depth about itbecause being more specific without it actually happening to me is difficult.

The last time that this happened to him was in a parking lot. He called me complaining about it and said that the Skip Shift light came on and when it did his tires started spinning. I highly doubt that the tires were spinning but that is what he said. It was raining and the parking lot was wet. He has talked about the Low Trac light coming on in the past so I believe he knows the differencebetween the two and he is not confused about what he is seeing.

He said that he almost hit someone due to the way the car acted.
I will talk with him more and repost what I find.

As far as guages go, I was thinking that the speedometer went up to 140 because I remember when we bought the car he said something about it and wondered if it would go that fast. I informed him that the computer would probably limit it to 110 or so. I will have to look at the gauges when he returns from school this afternoon and double-check that.

I will drive the car this afternoon and see if I can get it to do it with me.

Thanks again...

 

i dont know a whole lot about the v6's. I know that the v6 never had a 6 speed and that skip shift is 6 speed only, but he still seems to have the light and he says it corresponds with funny acting. Thats all I was saying. to sum up: he does not have CAGS, something else is up if hes getting the light

 

I know if ive been driving at high speed then stood on the brakes i get the odd light flicker up on the dash, but ive assumed its just the car sensing loss of traction through the ABS.
ive never worried about it.

 

if i miss an upshift and accidentally go into a gear thats too low while flooring it I will get a low trac light. and my car doesnt even have traction control.

 

All low trac tells you is that it has calculated that your car is slipping. Wheel speed doesn't equalindicatedspeed.