Well I went to change the VSS today...and found another problem!

The VSS was actually not hard to replace... I took the advice of that link above and got a long, 10" extension with a "wobble" head and just shoved it in there and it reached the bolts fine! Surprisingly, they were not tight at all, as you would expect on a 15 year old car...

So I removed the old VSS, and when I went to put in the new one, I noticed that the little drive pin (the peice that goes between the tranny and the VSS, that actually spins the VSS) had nowhere to sit in the hole in the tranny.

See, the little drive pin has two ears on either end, which are supposed to sit into a keyed part on the transmission. Well, that keyed part on the transmission is BROKEN!

I used a long telescoping magnet and found two broken peices in there. Seems like the previous owner knew about it when he tried to fix it, and just put the VSS back on there, hence the loose bolts.

But the good news is that I plugged the new VSS into the car, and the check engine light and "S" light no longer flash, so the car needed a new VSS any way.

But now I gotta change the entire power steering speed sensor assembly (or whatever that part is called), and I have no idea how much that'll cost