I did a search on this and it seems to be common, but seems to be a variety of things depending upon car and other issues, so I will post a new thread.

Like I said, my transmission shifts through all gears perfectly. No harshness (except when cold it is definitely more noticable going from 1-2) and no slippage in any of the gears. My problem is that when the engine is fully warm (80*C), when I shift into "D", it slams in gear harshly. I have only driven this car three times, the first day it did not do it and on the first trip today it did not do it. Today, on my second trip out, I had to run in Sears for a couple of Christmas gifts. When I was backing out, reverse was not that harsh this time, but when I shifted into drive after I backed out, it was harsh. So hard in fact that the engine stopped. I restarted it, shifted into drive, it stalled out again- third time, it did it again. The fourth time, I had to race the engine to 1500 rpms then shift into drive to keep it from stalling. It was jerky then too obviously. I hated to do that, but that was the only way to keep it running when I shifted into gear. When I got home, I tested it again and it was still jerky, but it did not stall out that time. Needless to say the episode in Sears parking lot was very embarrasing.

I hope this is something as simple as an adjustment, because this is a old car and I really do not want to put a whole lot of money into it.

Any advice on what this could be would be greatly appreciated!

BTW- the car is a 1985 380SE.