jorwel

I have 68,000 miles on my 2000 Avalon. Only real problem I have had is since day one the VSC and VSC Off lights come on together intermittently. A few times a year, I will be driving along and both lights would come on and stay on until I turned the car off. Finally it happened one day when I could drive it direct to a dealer. They were mystified, but finally told me they needed to take apart the transmission and put it back together. I was reluctant, but they said they needed to do it to fix the problem, so I let them go ahead. This was in 2002. It did not correct the problem, and I have had the VSC and VSC Off lights come on simultaneously a number of times since then. I brought the car in for its 60,000 mile service six months ago, and among the problems they noted was they needed to pull engine mount and transmission mount to drill out a broken bolt. I said that probably resulted from when they took apart the transmission; they readily agreed and did not charge me for fixing the bolt. They did however, forget to properly reattach the coolant reservoir, so as I was driving home the car started billowing white smoke. I took it in the next day, the delaer claimed my thermostat had failed, but again they agreed to fix at no charge. I argued that it was clearly do to the coolant reservoir not being attached and the cap being off and I was concerned about permanent engine damage. They said not to worry about engine damage, the technician working on the car would have told them if that was the case. Today the VSC and VSC Off lights both came on, but this time the check engine light came on as well. I drove it in to the dealer and the handheld computer registered a code P0773. They tell me I need to replace the shift solenoid, estimated cost $557, but they can't do it until Friday. They also charged me $107 today, claiming "diagnosing the problem is the hard part, the fix is easy". I don't know if they did any further diagnosis beyond what the handheld told them, but there is no way for me to know. I've tried to do some checking on the internet. It appears it's possible that the harness could be the problem and not the solenoid, leading me to suspect that they may have messed up the harness when they took apart the transmission. I also saw a post that said there is a service bulletin out for 2001 Avalon for this code that is good for 80,000 miles and that I might need a new engine/transmision computer. Any help on this? I asked what would happen if I didn't fix it, what does this solenoid do, and I didn't get a real clear answer. With their failure to be able to fix the vsc/VSC Off problem, I am wary of spending $700 to find out that it doesn't work to solve the check engine problem.