Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the forum and Mitsubishi's in general. My wife and I recently bought a 2003 Montero Limited. It was doing great until Sunday. We backed out of the driveway and it wouldn't shift into drive. The shifter itself felt very stiff moving it from Park to D. It's not felt that way over the several weeks we've owned it. I also noticed N and D indicator lights were on together.

I pulled the dipstick and it appeared to be bone dry. My wife drove the hour and fourty five minutes to the nearest Mitsu Dealer for some Diamond SP3. I let it get to operating temperature and started adding slowly. 2 qts later, it's finally just a touch over the hot-full mark (will drain to proper level this week).

I was then able to pull the shift lever from park to D and when the N and D lit up together, I gave the lever an extra tug and it shifted into D. I drove around the block, tried sport mode, shifted through all the gears and everything seems just fine.

I let my wife try it, and the shift lever is still a bit stiff, but she didn't get both N and D to light at the same time. It went right into drive.

When we have the money, we will do a full transmission flush. Do we need to have them look at the shift lever/linkage as well?

We are really excited to have the Montero and hope we can have it for a long time.