'94 Acclaim auto tranny acting weird .........

Hi all - My '94 Acclaim (2.5 liter and 3 speed automatic tranny) has
only 45k easy miles on it and a few days ago the transmission began
doing a weird thing. This only happens when you first start it and drive
away. The tranny shifts fine from 1st to 2nd. Then when it should shift
to 3rd it acts just like it went into neutral. I take my foot off the
gas and manually shift down to 2nd and then back to 3rd and then it
shifts fine. From there on it shifts perfect in any gear (including
kickdowns). You can park it for a while and it is still fine. However,
if it is parked for several hours it does the neutral thing again. But
only once, and then it's fine.
Is this a major problem or does it need something simple like a
fluid/filter change (by the way, I changed the fluid/filter 2 years ago
when it had 20k miles on it).

Thanks in advance........

 

That's very early for there to be chips of differential bearing clogging
the governor, which tends to cause this sort of problem on high-mileage
units. Change the fluid and filter (use ATF+4; the small cost premium is
worth the superior fluid characteristics) and adjust the bands properly.
If you know your way thoroughly around the inside of that transmission,
you can do a few things to improve shift quality and transmission
durability - these include blocking the accumulator in the "up" position
and dialling-in a moderate increase in trans line pressure.

DS