[indicatoto101]

Hi. I own a 1999 Dodge Stratus- 4 doors, 6 cylinders, about 78k miles. Recently, I've had problems with shifting to drive. After starting up (the car doesn't have problems cranking), and shifting to drive, the car will drive slowly for about 2 seconds before it will automatically shift back to park/neural. I sometimes force it to drive by stepping on gas - hard, but it eventually shifts back to N/P.

Usually, after warming up (which takes about 15 minutes in cold weather. I usually don't have this problem in the heat) it will drive fine, but when I stopped today on the highway, the drive gear shifted, and I had to forcefully hit the gas pedal. Another symptom is difficult steering when the problem occurs. When steering is smooth, the car drives fine. When steering is clunky, the car will first drive for a few seconds then stall.

What could be wrong? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Dakotah18]

I'm not sure if '99 was a drive by wire model or not, but that would be where I'd look as far as the steering/driving issues, as far as the shifter goes, it seems like there is a problem with the shift linkage, maybe a bind in it somewhere, it happened on my '92 Sundance, not too bad to replace, it's a cable, feeding it thru is the toughest part, but even that is easy especially if you have a piece of wire or a coat hanger unwound to pull it thru into the inside of the car

 

[indicatoto101]

Thanks for the quick fix advice Dakotah. I don't know much about cars about I'll try to find out where the shift linkage cable is.