[devistatr]

Hey Guys,

While I was driving home tonight, I was about 15 kms into a 25 km trip and left the last red light of my trip and started accelerating and noticed that there was some major slippage and my car was acting like a CVT would, going up to 5500rpm and not doing a whole hell of a lot.

I'm cruising along 80-90kmh (50-55mph) and things are going ok, I'm a little weirded out, so I'm hitting the pedal, etc etc and its shifting weird, etc. Go a little further and head towards my offramp, floor it to see how it responds, it slips some more after trying to downshift and doesn't seem to go into gear until I let it off.

Of course by this time, my radar goes off and I get nailed by the police for speeding, he likes my story, but still issues the lesser ticket. Anyway, I throw it into gear from there and it kinda lagged a little bit and clunked into gear, and then as I'm leaving it is stick in first gear pretty long and way into the revs and finally goes up a gear but is still slipping and not accelerating me.

I had to go up the hill after downshifting manually into first gear on the selector (which worked fine, but I could only do 50-60kmh, which I understand is really 2nd gear)

So I get home, park it, run it through the gears like the manual says and check the fluid, it is perfect, it is new fluid from 20,000 kms ago, done by ford and has been running perfect, no leaks and up to date on all maintenance. It has 199,000 kms on it (130,000 miles off the top of my head)

I also lifted the hood and for the first time ever on the car, I could smell the tranny fluid, but nothing was leaking. I went under the car briefly and the pan was what I would consider quite hot.

Any ideas. I've seen stuff about VSS, TRS, The Valve replacement... I don't know where to start to diagnose further and need your assistance!

2005 Taurus SE 133k miles - Vulcan - AX4N

 

[devistatr]

I had also given thought to the Torque Converter as well... Is this possible to remove the tranny and just do that by itself ? Straight forward to do ?

Also now that I was looking at it, I now have my display in my car saying "Check Transmission" but no CEL or Codes when I hooked up my obdII

 

[tomtaurus]

Have you checked your fluid level. If so was it low or did it smell burnt?

 

[Jeff K]

If the display says "check transmission", there should be codes (P17xx, P18xx, P07xx, P08xx)) stored. What scanner are you using? Is it CAN compatable? Many older cheaper scanners are not CAN compatable.

 

[devistatr]

The fluid was recently changed by FORD and the level and small was perfect, it wasn't burnt.

Even when I took it to the transmission shop, he didn't figure it was the transmission, but we drove it around some and he started to change his mind.

I ended up having it rebuilt and it was the pressure plate and hydraulics in it... Couldn't press the plate up for OD/D but I could drive it around in gears 2 and 1 (To get 2, I had to toss it into D and back into 1 when I was above 20kmh or so)

I could drive it in Drive as long as it was perfectly flat and accelerate very slowly at speed, but as soon as you give it a bit more, just slippage and OD was pretty well useless.

I suppose they could have figured it out and replaced the specific part, but 1 yr unlimited mileage warranty for 2072.50 in Calgary Alberta is a good deal for a rebuild. Mr. Transmission wanted like 3800 bucks and was less warranty.

 

[devistatr]

Transmission guy was surprised.. Never sees AX4N's in... All kinds of AX4S (his included, his wife killed his Windstar with the POS AX4S)

 

[devistatr]

If the display says "check transmission", there should be codes (P17xx, P18xx, P07xx, P08xx)) stored. What scanner are you using? Is it CAN compatable? Many older cheaper scanners are not CAN compatable.

The guy had a very nice Snap-on rig that could cycle through all the types of KOEO, etc and removed the codes that my cheap rig couldn't delete out of a secondary computer chip somewhere.

For some reason one time it made my IAC mess up and set it off, but it's brand new, from FORD and after he reset that it didn't set it off.. But he had indicated that the IAC can mess with the tranny and make it want to slip and he was hopeful that was the issue to start with.

Everything is good now though and hopefully the 2005 takes at least another 100,000 kms in the next year or so. Just crossed the 200k line

 

[sheila]

Ive been down that road years ago with a faulty iac causing tranny issues on a 94 vulcan. $1500 later and it still took a new iac (which wasnt throwing any codes). I def. feel your pain!