First of all, I drive an automatic 95 Talon Tsi FWD...

My problem lies within shifting/downshifting. When I accelerate my car will slam into gear a little too late sometimes... and when I'm slowing down, it will downshift a little too early every once in a while.

It is not something that happens every time I accelerate or decelerate... but it does happen fairly frequently. Has this happened to anyone else, and are there any ideas as to what the problem may be?

I'm hoping I don't have to do a transmission swap/rebuild....

i had the same prblem with my eclipse. i needed a new tranny. MAKE SURE THEY REPLACE THE CELLINOIDS thats what cause the bad shifting. My car jerked and it was the motor mounts. Not sure if ures is doing that but if it is thats why.

When you say that I should replace the cellinoids, do you mean... when they replace the transmission? How long did you have this problem before the tranny dropped?

When they rebuild the transmission to save money the dont replace the cellinoids (its about a $500.00 part). The cellinoids is what control when the transmission shifts. There is no way to test if it went bad or not. After they fixed my tranny and i got it back on 1 week i was back there and it was broke again. They replaced the cellinoids under warranty and now the car runs mint. My car has no 3rd or 4th gear, i was basically running on 1st and 2nd thats how bad it was. In all it cost about $1,550.00 to totally get fixed. The car runs really nice now. Shifts perfect! Check your transmission fluid before i got mine fixed it was brownish and smelt burnt. If it is like that there definatley is a transmission problem and you should get it checked out. Tranny fluid color is usually cherry red. If the fluid turns out to be fine you could try adding some syncro shift fluid. It can be found on the DSMtuners website.

Not meaning to re-hash a dead subject... but it's a solenoid pack. Mounted to the front side of the transmission just below the oil cooler lines. While it can give shifting problems such as harsh shifting or no shifting at all, called limp-in, it is not the only cause of these symptoms. There are ways of checking the solenoid pack operation. There is an automatic transmission control module that can be checked with the proper scan tool (dealer item mostly) which you can check CVIs= Clutch wear, input and output speed sensor signals as well as many other components.
Typically the input and output speed sensors go bad and cause the vehicle not to shift. It's important to have competant people looking over your car because it's easy to say the transmission needs a $2,000 rebuild and not put in the $30 input or output speed sensors until after they get your 2g first.
Doug

Thanks for the solenoid help doug... I'll get those checked out asap.

When i got my used tranny from the auto place it only had 40,000 miles on it and it came with a little computer i think it is the tcm transmisson controle module. I didn't put it in i left the old one on and it works fine. The reason i didn't put it in is because i couldn't find where the old one was. Can anyone please tell me where it is thnx

if im correct its right behind your cd player.. someone told me that i might be wrong but if you look on your passanger side look where your feet go and in that space where you can see the back of the cd player there should be a little computer mounted there i think that is it

That's correct. The Engine computer is under the hood by the battery and the Transmission control module is behind the radio.