Trans issues - Not Festiva

[sketchman]

I still think that's what people get for buying new cars. There's alot of trash getting made these days. But everyone wants comfort and luxury, looks like you'll have to take out a second mortgage to cover those needs.

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I agree. I never would have bought it. My grandma went with her to pick out a car, and they basically got because of the color. Seriously. Color and 4WD. That was it. No research at all.

The Arena would be a more appropriate place to discuss ford front or AWD transmissions. Actually the transmissions are one thing it is the engineers that designed 100 ways to destroy a good transmission in a vehicle much to powerful and heavy for it.

That said the filter is ....only replaced when the unit id overhauled. To make it last you remove its ability to filter and make it a reasonable obstruction to large objects. Your only reasonable line of defence is to drop the oil with every engine oil change and do a power flush every 4th or 5th engine oil change.

Ford was aware that we would figure this out so they designed another great idea. They made the air conditioning condensor and the transmission cooler all one part in front of the radiator. Then they forgot to put in proper cooler mounts. Now when either system fails you buy the super expensive cooler. The best fix is to get the best add on cooler you can and put it in front of the original AC condenser combo unit. Now when you are stuck in traffic or idling around parking lots the super high temp 134 fluid in the AC will not burn up your transmission. Bleeping idiots, can you believe they did that?

Not done yet, the morons had Mercon V available to take some heat but they spec. the Mercon non synthetic just to make sure it smoked. Get a non Mercon V oil, but that is synthetic. Valvoline max life mercon, what ever.

You have a transmission carefully cared for according to fords guidelines so you have problems. You may have debris plugging the original cooler causing high line pressure at times. You could have some worn bores in the valve body causing pressure control spools to stick. 134 running hot in the AC system can cook the tranny oil hot enough to cause solenoid malfunction and failure.

The vehicle is a little big for something designed for a high gas mileage car. The band wears and breaks. The valve body wears where the check balls are. The bushings like oil that is not boiling . Clutch material is even more picky.

If you put wonder juice in dark oil it probably just helped plug up the cooler more. If the oil has never turned dark look at the pressure regulator valve and control solenoids.

Don't think that newer is better, I just rebuilt a 6 speed AWD in a 2010 Escape. They designed a floating center support and the feed hydraulic pressure to the to clutch sets it contains...idiots..I guess your short lived drums and bands were lasting too long.

LOL

I feel you. The fluid was dark when I changed it a few days ago and put in fresh fluid and the miracle juice. I was hesitant to even put it in, because it was so thick. Like purple honey. I figure you could get the same "benefit" by stick a quart of gear oil in. But if it's dying anyway, I'll see about the reman and just limp it as long as I can.

I suggested a real cooler to her, and I'll check on some plain Mercon fluid and do a power flush.

[Movin]

If you are getting a reman it may come with a cooler or they may require you to purchase a new one with proof of purchase. The oil does not turn dark with a good cooler until 100K or so.

The 2010 never towed, all it does is idle around parking lots and go to the bank . I have more money in that thing than the 30 or so 90's vehicles all put together. Power locks wore out, electronic steering quit. Transmission cooler broke the mounts off a year before the transmission lost reverse. Brakes wore out. Tie rod ends and ball joints ( probably due to parking lot duty ) Seat upholstery twice to protect the side airbag. ( Officers wear toyz on their belts. ) Tire eating monster .. lol

[Dragonhealer]

Movin, you left out the part where the TCU is supposed to be re-flashed with updates periodically !
Grandmothers '91 Caddy when 12 years old, had missed 71 trans code updates !?!?!

[sketchman]

LOL Probably runs Windows.

[Dragonhealer]

LOL Probably runs Windows.

HAHAHahaha I vote this "Best Post of the Forum" !

[Movin]

Movin, you left out the part where the TCU is supposed to be re-flashed with updates periodically !
Grandmothers '91 Caddy when 12 years old, had missed 71 trans code updates !?!?!

lol like windows I am scared of updates unless it is the only hope..

[sketchman]

I always disable "security" and update nonsense. When a service pack comes out I just wipe and reinstall. I've had service packs I waited for hours for to install and then left me with a broken PC I had to wipe anyway. And the last one was XP SP3. So what should have been the most stable update that existed broke the OS.

[sketchman]

So update on this. I went to install the biggest cooler I could find, and I found something disturbing related to Movin's comments.

There is a dedicated trans cooler already there. So they had lots of failures with a real trans oil cooler in the first models, AND then they went and made it worse by combining the AC unit and the trans unit in later models. I could see them blindly doing that if they were trying to reduce parts as they do, IF the old way hadn't already caused issues. But this is blatant sabotage.

I went ahead and installed the cooler I'd already bought, so now it has 2 of them, which can't hurt. They also routed the trans fluid through one of those radiator embedded "coolers" which I happily bypassed with the install. Weird too, the overflow for the rad is on the pass side, but they stuck the hose as far away from it as possible on the driver side bottom of the rad with the trans in and out lines.

There has to be a dedicated stupid dept where the job all day is to find some way to fit as much stupid as possible into each vehicle. It's nuts.

[Meepersly]

Wow sounds like a hassle