The A/T in my '89 740 project car likes to stay in first gear sometimes. About every other time I take off from a dead stop, the car won't shift out of first gear until I completely let off the gas pedal. Then, after finally shifting into second, shifting into every other gear is completely normal, depending on how hard I'm mashing on the gas. Kick-downs are also OK, and happen as expected when I mash on the gas. The problem seems to happen more often after the car is completely warmed up.

The kick-down cable does not bind whenever I play with it under the hood. But definitely I'm going to take a closer look at it tomorrow when there's daylight again.

Also -- I have flushed the fluid (it was not particularly dirty), and dropped the pan to look for excess wear (there were no filings on the magnets).

So I stumped. BTW this problem was the reason I got this car for $500... the lady's "mechanic" (if you could call him that) said that the transmission needed to be replaced. She had just finished spending $3000 to have a rebuilt engine installed and wasn't going to spend another cent on this car. Any advice?

Thanks!