Morning everyone,

I had previously posted a question about the trans on my '05 Expy slipping in what I thought was 3rd. After reading various threads and posts and a click of a button I think I may have figured out what the problem was. I pushed the button on the shift lever to turn OFF the over drive and it no longer slips. It would seem that the potential problem is the broken servo clip that many of the threads talk about.

Issue I have right now is that I'm currently stationed in South Korea and my Ford is now a foreign car. I took it to a shop that specifically works on American cars and I was getting a good feeling about the issue talking with the owner/mechanic....up until the point where he started telling me "what if we open it up and that's not the problem...what do you want to do?" Of course, I don't have an answer to that and he then tells me "well, sometimes we find more things wrong....your car is 2005...8 yrs old...about time to rebuild transmission...that's the best thing..." I'm green but I know that transmissions don't need to be rebuilt every 8-10 yrs...so now I don't trust this guy as far as I can throw him.

Here is my question: Is there any harm in simply turning off the O/D every time I drive? Reading the owners manual, I get the impression that the only thing negative will be my gas mileage is going to suck real bad. I can deal with that until I get the car back stateside (in 3 years) if that's all the ill effects. I don't drive anywhere near the speed or distance here as I would in the states so it's not going to be getting the same amount of use. I'm going to continue looking for someone I can trust over here just trying to get some options/opinions.

Thoughts?

 

Actually the guy sounds rather trustworthy to me. The untrustworthy ones would wait until it's on the lift and disassembled and then ask you "what if" because it's a lot harder to say no at that time. To me it sounds like this guy has been around the block a few times, knows his stuff and is giving you a heads up.

Yes you can drive with the OD off, but at higher speeds you can expect more heat to be generated which will in turn accelerate you toward the necessity of a full rebuild.