O/D Off? On downshift?

[oopssorryy]

My little sister has just gotten herself an '88 Camry DX. It's a I4 3S-FE, FWD auto. It's a great little car with decent power for it's age, but it won't down shift into 1st unless you manually do it by shifting into L. It does this at all times, hot or cold, at a stop or moving. What we've all been doing is shifting from L too 2 then to drive, and if you do that the car is great. Also the O/D light is flashing if you have the O/D button depressed. I know this most likely means that we don't have 4th gear.

Now we have replace the transmission fluid and filter, but only found an improvement in shift quality. Any ideas on how to fix this? It's my sister car and she'll be driving a lot when she goes to school in the fall, so I would like it to work properly.

[Doctor J]

Flashing o/d means there is electrical fault in the transmission control.
you will need to pull the trouble codes stored in ECT computer memory.
when solenoid #1 is bad you will have only 3rd and O/d gears; when solenoid #2 is bad you will have 1st and o/D gears.
The problem most often can be caused by damaged wires and bad connectors.

[oopssorryy]

Thanks for the quick reply, I'll check the ECU and get back to you.