No Reverse, Probably My fault..Help

Hi, I am new here and like everyone else I have a car problem. Here is the whole saga.

1997 SL2 Twice during a 4+ hour drive speedometer dropped to zero and shortly went back to normal.

Vehicle failed emissions test with PO731 Gear 1 Incorrect ratio. SES light hab been coming on erratically. Sometimes out for a month sometimes on for a week, Car drives and shifts normal.

I pulled the valve body appart and looked at the solenoids. All read the same resistance with an ohm meter. None looked burned or damaged.

While the valve body was apart the thin black plate got disturbed causing one of the steel balls to fall out. I put it back in the only place that had a seat on the black plate that did not have a ball in it. The hole it went in had a fluid passage hole in the bottom.

I put everything back together with new fluid and filter.

I soldered in two new pieces of wire to replace two kinked wires going to the VSS. I thought this might be the original problem with the code.
Everything works fine now except there is no reverse. No noise, slipping, jumping or anything. just like there is never a signal to go into reverse.

Can someone give me some help.:banghead:

My thoughts are if that ball was in the wrong spot the transmission would try to shift, slip or something.

You left out the part about the Ball :nono::iceslolan

But unfortunetly im not sure what that ball does or is

Thanks to the person who showed me where to download ($25 and worth it) the saturn TAAT manual.
I definately have the .250 ball in the wrong location.
I will be going back into it friday and getting it right this time.

Manuals for future reference:http://www.atsg.biz:80/