Gearbox started slipping between gears on the way to work how worried should I actually be?
So this happened quite suddenly which is the part that's throwing me off a bit because there were no real warning signs leading up to it, or at least none that I recognized as warning signs at the time, and now I'm sitting here trying to work out how serious this actually is and whether I can realistically drive the car for a few more days while I sort out where to take it or whether I'm risking making things significantly worse by doing that. The car is a Toyota Camry, 2016, and it's been completely reliable up until this point which is maybe why I wasn't paying close enough attention to the small things in the weeks before this happened. What I noticed this morning was that when I was accelerating onto the main road the gearbox seemed to hesitate in a way it never has before, almost like it was searching for the right gear and not quite committing to it, and then at one point it felt like it dropped out of gear briefly before catching itself, which was genuinely alarming when you're in moving traffic and not expecting it. I pulled over for a few minutes, let the car sit, and when I started driving again it seemed almost normal for the rest of the trip but I'm not naive enough to think that means the problem has resolved itself. I mentioned it to a friend over lunch who's fairly knowledgeable about cars and his immediate question was when I'd last had the transmission fluid checked, which I'll be honest I couldn't answer with any confidence because it's one of those things I'd always assumed was being covered in the annual service without ever specifically asking about it. He also said that depending on what's actually going on inside the gearbox, leaving it and continuing to drive could turn what might be a manageable repair into something much more extensive, which is not what I wanted to hear but probably fair. I started looking into options in the Sharjah area since that's where I'm based and where I'd need to get the car to without driving too far on a transmission that's clearly not happy, and during that search I came across some information about a premium gearbox repair service in Industrial Area 10 Sharjah which seemed to cover the kind of diagnostic work I'd need before anyone could even give me a realistic picture of what's going on and what it's likely to cost to sort out. What I'm genuinely unsure about right now is whether I should be getting the car towed rather than driving it, because on one hand the slipping wasn't constant and the car drove mostly okay for the second half of my commute, but on the other hand I have no idea whether what I experienced this morning was the beginning of something that's going to deteriorate quickly or a one off that might hold for a while longer. I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who's dealt with gearbox slipping on a car this age, particularly whether you drove it in for assessment or had it towed, and whether the eventual diagnosis was something that could have been made worse by continuing to drive before getting it looked at properly.
