Three problems related to automatic transmission have been reported for the 1997 Chevrolet Express. The most recently reported issues are listed below.
The transmission had an overheating problem that caused the vehicle to switch to "safe" mode. Safe mode compensated the transmission heat problem by hard shifting. The vehicle was taken to a transmission specialty repair shop where I learned that the problem was in the design of the transmission. It was the opinion of the repair shop that gm knew of the problem but would not issue a recall because the issue was not life threatening. Cost of modification was $1,600.
The reaction shell broke in the transmission, disabling the vehicle completely while in traffic. This caused my wife who was driving it to essentially stall out. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the repairs to a vehicle with such low mileage totaled over $2200. 00. Mighty poor quality. Thankfully the failure did not take place while she was passing someone, or going uphill.
Transmission has hard shift from first to second. Sets off s e s light. Took to jerry brown Chevrolet in bufford GA, the transmission man there test drove my van with me, he hooked a test unit to see what was going on said something called staor? bushings and /or valve body, said he sees this alot in the 1997 and 1998 models. My question is if gm knew about it why are they not letting owners know and fixing them.
| Automatic Transmission problems | |
| Noises During Shifting problems | |
| Transmission Noise problems |