Hey all. Not too good with small chassis Ford powertrains, so I thought I'd run this one by the Exploder crowd. My buddy has a 98 X, and about every third time he accelerates he experiences hard shifting and a slight clunk. He claims this happens more often when he accelerates out of a left turn. His mechanic ($3500 spent in the past month for BS "repairs") told him it was "definitely" the trans mounts, but I'm not sold. They seem pretty solid, and the truck has no driveline slack at all. From my experience and from reading several years back in this forum, I believe there's random crap floating around his valve body, or that there's a bad gasket somewhere. Yall's thoughts on dropping the pan, checking for burned ATF, replacing all fluid, then going from there? The truck is still driveable so there's time to play with.

 

For the $100 or so it will cost to drain the transmission fluid, change the filter, and fill with the correct, fresh fluid, it's worth a try.

-Rod

 

Dropped the pan today. It had about a tablespoon of metal chips between the magnet and the filter. 236000 miles and I suspect its the original ATF so thats not necessarily bad. The seal around the valve body looks bad, will be replacing that and seeing where I end up.