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Originally Posted by Jay H 237
Sounds like one of the Chrysler minivans to me.  |
The early-1990s Chrysler (and family) automatics tended to fail with regularity, but this deficiency has supposedly been corrected in later models. (So I hope...I had a '92 with no transmission issues over nine years, and the '00 seems to be holding up so far--it's got the heavy-duty transmission cooler, which can only help matters.)
Many of those problems were, however, attributable to the use of the wrong transmission fluid, or not draining and refilling fluid occasionally, or not replacing the transmission fluid filter. Your first step should be to figure out if any of those things were changed when the transmission was serviced. Did the shop use Dexron fluid? If they did, you might consider blaming them. The transmission needs ATF+3, and has been widely reported to die horribly if it isn't supplied.
As for the automatic vs. manual thing, the "P" position is a giveaway (the manual wouldn't have it), as is the "slowly released the brake" portion of the anecdote (manuals don't creep like automatics, thanks to their lack of a torque converter). But the clutch packs in an automatic (which engage gearsets, rather than the engine output) work a little differently than you might suspect; they basically lock planetaries together to change the gear ratio at the driveshaft (or in this case, the front axle).
By the way, Eugenia, FWD
is 2WD, which is what you've got. You'd easily be able to tell if it were an AWD version by the decals on the tailgate (in addition to the obvious mechanical differences, like a driveshaft sprouting from the transaxle, or the smaller gas tank).
Edit: I just realized, you could also have a 3-speed, in which case, some of this may not apply; all my experience is with the 4-speed automatic.