Originally Posted by MuddyG

I just went through this on my 2002 Explorer. If you are getting the shift flare going from 1 to 2 (has to get to 3K+ rpm to shift and/or you need to let off the gas a little to get it to shift) then the problem is the OD servo, if the shift flare is at other gears its the IM servo.

My Explorer has the 5R55W tranny in it, and I am pretty sure you have the same or at least a version of the 5R55.

I think someone mentioned already that you need to have sleeves inserted into the servo bores in a previous post. This is one way to address this issue, and really is the most common approach. It will require you to drop the tranny out to do it, so if you are doing that then you might as well replace all the wear parts while it is out, basically think of it as a total overhaul. If you are wondering why you need to insert these sleeves the reason is the servo piston is hardened steel and the bore it slides in is aluminum, the steel wears on the aluminum. In my research I found that the mileage before this happens varies, some folks say they get it at 70K miles or less, I went 147K miles before it happened to me.

Now there is another option for you, which will not require you to drop the tranny, and it is the approach I chose to take. There is a guy who has come up with a fix for this issue (patent pending). Basically he takes the Ford OEM servos and cuts grooves on both sides of the fluid transfer area and inserts viton o-rings into the grooves. You can install the servos while the tranny is still on the truck (you will need to move some exhaust components out of the way), you don't even have to drop the pan or drain the fluid. He sells them on ebay (do a search for 5R55W servo and you will find it) He will verify your tranny based on VIN and send you both the IM and OD servos as well as detailed step by step instructions. It will cost you about $200 for the parts, way cheaper than a rebuild. And he ships fast, I ordered mine on a tuesday and had them on that friday, and in the truck that saturday. My truck shifts smooth as silk now. (after putting these in you will need to do a band adjustment, another easy job to do, look it up on this sight and some guy has detailed instructions with pictures)

Now you also asked about the tranny fluid (how to get it back in / check it), its considered a sealed system, hence no dipstick. The drain plug has a smaller plug in the middle of it that a torx bit fits, the smaller plug is what you remove to "check" fluid level or the fluid itself. If you remove that smaller plug and nothing comes out, you are low on fluid, a small stream should drop out if it full of fluid. Now the tricky part is getting fluid back in. What I did was I went down to the hardware store and got a plastic quick disconnect fitting (used usually for connecting water lines to ice makers and such) that fit the size of the smaller plug mentioned above (I think if memory serves it was a 1/8" fitting) then I connected a plastic tube (same isle as the fitting in the hardware store) to a hand pump (they sell one for about $8 at the automotive store, purpose built to fit to the top of a quart or gallon size oil container) and pumped it back up into the tranny.

Now I mentioned above that you don't need to drain fluid to do the servo fix, so in case you are wondering why I was pumping fluid back into my tranny, well I thought when I got the PO775 code I needed to replace the solenoid block which I did which requires you to drop the pan, which did not solve my PO775 code issue, the servo fix above did though.

Hope that helps