Was it getting hot enough to boil the fluid out of the dipstick?

Sounds like some sort of slipping is making the fluid extremely hot. I guess it could also be a blocked or collapsed trans cooler line. I would expect you'd see contaminated fluid if it were slipping that bad.

On my SE, the shifter gets just warm enough to notice it near the base of the stick, but not anywhere near as hot as you describe.

It sounds like you have some trans overheating issue that could potentially be very expensive. I certainly wouldn't drive it until I had the problem fixed. You could wind up doing more damage.

Check your cooler lines, make sure they are not plugged or collapsed. Same goes for the trans portion of the radiator. Although, the more I think about it, I don't really know what the fluid path is on that trans. Some trans would just not work if it were unable to circulate fluid through the cooler.

Definitely sounds like something's causing a heat build up, though. And if that's true, you can expect a catastrophic failure if you keep driving it.



-tp