I very seriously doubt the truck was abused before I got it. The guy who owned it was in his 50s and was the Fire Cheif at our local fire department. He took extremely nice care of the truck. When I say that the truck was (and still is) spotless inside and out I am not exaggerating. It was pretty clear to me that the truck was cleaned religiously inside/out and under the hood as well. The truck didnt have a scratch on it. Of course looks can be decieving and appearance doesn't indicate if it was used for towing. I just think that if someone put so much effort into taking care of the rest of the truck, they obviously took a lot of pride in it and it says something about the person.

I get where you're coming from. I have a lot of pride in my truck as well; however, when I first noticed I had a problem I started doing some reading on the internet. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of horror stories about the 4R100. Not to say they are all junk or that everyone has problems with them, but it is not rare to see them fail. I called 4 transmission shops when I was looking to find a place that I could trust to do the work. Each one interrupted me when I said, "Its a 2000 F-350 7.3 liter ----" OH! The old 4R100.... we get a LOT of those in here. One of the shops I spoke to even told me he had 2 SuperDutys waiting in the lot for repair. They all had comments to the effect of: The E40D was a piece of crap and the 4R100 is a slightly better piece of crap. I personally am not a transmission guy but my own feeling is that if you use aluminum planetaries and a real crappy torque converter behind a 7.3 liter... expect problems.

As for knowing what the shop will actually do without me watching - I have no way of knowing for sure. I spoke to 4 local shops and this guy seemed to be the most knowledgable and trust worthy. He didn't mind me asking a lot of questions and shared a lot of information with me about how he normally rebuilds the 4R100s. He offered to tow the truck to his shop and diagnose the problem for free whether I decided to have him fix it or not (I could use AAA to tow it somewhere else if I didn't decide to have him work on it). He also gave me a bunch of options for upgrades to heavy duty parts - I ended up choosing them all. He called me back a day later to tell me that he ordered everything but wanted to know for sure if I wanted to add $136 (plus an hour of labor) for the heavy duty (four times larger than the original) trans cooler and if so that he would have to order that as well.

All four shops offered a 1 year 12,000 mile warranty including the shop I ended up going with. However, when I started asking about heavy duty options he told me that if I wanted to go heavy duty that he would not mark up the cost of the parts and would double the warranty. The heavy duty internals and torque converter added about $650 to the price. I really doubt he would offer to double the warranty if he didn't believe the trans was going to last. His words were essentially this: "This trans is going to be bullet proof, it will shift fast (reducing wear on the clutches) and will really talk to ya when it shifts! I will double the warranty for you - the way we are going to build this thing I can be sure I won't be buying you another transmission in the next two years!"

Thats all I have to go on, but without the guy being a close friend or family - I don't have much choice but to trust him and hope for the best.

Again, I will post a follow-up once I get the truck back and if all seems good and I am still happy with this shop I will post their name/address/contact info in case anyone else in my area (Central Connecticut) needs a good trans shop.

 

What was that saying about freinds and family being the first to take advantage of you?

 

Steve, make sure the tranny shop owner buys SUNCOAST parts, they are very well known for HD replacement parts.
I would def recomend a HD VB upgrade or a TRANSGO TUGGER KIT II
I just had that installed on my truck and it really woke up the 4R100
When I bought my 02 in May 05, with 79K miles, it needed trans work withon two weeks. The dealership replaced the TC first and then the solenoids.
I put about 50K miles on after that with no major issues.
Running MOBILE1 synthetic ATF, MAG HYTEC deep trans pan and TRU COOL 4139(biggest cooler made by them)
def have them install a Trans temp gauge, if you don't already have one.

good luck!

YES< the old EO4D and 4R100 are well known in the TRANS business

 

Brian's Truck Shop (BTS) out of Lead Hill, Arkansas also builds a "rock solid bullet proof" 4R100. It is expensive but it is the best tranny in these parts. Brian will also stand behind it no matter how much horse power you apply. Towing my 32 ft. 5th wheel trailer is like the difference between night and day from the original tranny.

 

Steves2000,

I just had the same thing on my 01 superduty. What did you finally end up doing to correct it?

thanks

 

Wow, I cant believe it has been 4 years since this post!

Ultimately the transmission had to be rebuilt. There was a broken sprag (teeth sheared off) that needed to be replaced. As indicated in one of my previous posts I had a local trans shop do the work and they did an amazing job at a fair price ($2200 if I remember correctly). All of the internals that could be replaced with heavy duty parts were, including the sprags that were originally 12 tooth and are now 24. It has a heavy duty converter and auxillary cooler. I have towed some very heavy equipment with it and continue to plow snow (only my driveway these days) and it has performed flawlessly.

Its probably not the news you were hoping to hear but if it is the same problem I had, you're likely looking at a rebuild. On the bright side, if you have a good shop do the work and rebuilt it with heavy duty parts you'll be quite happy with it!

Good luck!

 

Thanks for getting back to me. I will post the results after the rebuild. After 180K I knew it was coming.

 

I found it interesting that so many people started with tossing parts at it and did
not even say anything about scanning for codes. If the overdrive light was
flashing it really should of been scanned for stored codes. Then you have an
idea where you stand and what to start looking at.

Sean

 

If the symptom had been a flashing OD light scanning codes would make a lot of sense. My symptom was that with the truck in any forward gear it wouldnt move. Reverse worked but no forward gears... it simply acted as though it was in neutral. There were no lights, no codes. It was a hard mechanical failure not picked up by any of the sensors.

 

Still if you had it on a scanner then it would tell you if it thought it was in gear x
or not. It could just be sensing where it is in regards to the gear selector. It should
also give you some feedback on what it's telling the electrical solenoids to do.
The there is a simple pressure test. I don't have the spec for any more than that.

Sean

 

Mark, I recently had a 2-3 shift valve sticking and replacement fixed it. Shortly after the truck is going into failsafe and starting off in second. Manually takes off in first. 20k junk yard trans. Any chance 1-2 shift valve is also sticking now?

 

Yes, it is possible. Are there any codes stored?

 

what was the symptoms of it sticking? hard shaifts? Mine does this intermitently and I figured I was just coming up to a rebuild soon.

 

Hard shifts are more likely to be the accumulator valve sticking than the shift valve.

 

Will it do it intermittently and is it time for a rebuild?