Got a feeling I'm about to be shopping for a new transmission or solenoid, 3rd takes a while to kick in forcing me to back off the RPMs a little then reapply the gas to kick in 3rd and it does it smoothly here just takes some backing off and re-applying to kick in. When applying anything past half power after 30 miles per hour you can hear clicking noises almost and the more power you give from here the louder and more frequent it gets. Btw i'm saying clicking noise because thats the only way i can describe it but does sound metal related, I'm thinking fly wheel. Jumping on the highway takes about 1.5 minutes to go from 40 to 70, if you apply any more gas with out waiting you'll get this noise again. 2 years ago i replaced the starter, while moving around under it i noticed where the starter go's in and meets the fly wheel there was metal shavings. From the small amount of the fly wheel that was visible it didn't look chipped or anything, but that's with out saying since i couldn't see the rest of it. Solenoid would cause the loss of power and the shift issue between 2nd and 3rd but the grinding like clicking noise when applying certain amount of gas has me rethinking could be the actual transmission. Its never had any tests done on it for internal damage either. Thanks.

Cars & Trucks - Saturn - SL - 1996 Saturn SL